Computer games aren’t just for fun, says MoD
December 29, 2011
Posted by:Philippa Tuckman
The time and money spent on live training exercises will be cut over the years as better and more realistic computer simulations are developed.
Today’s recruits arrive with high standards. They’ve all used Call of Duty, Battlefield 3 or Killzone 3, which have better graphics and are more realistic than the training packages that have been offered by the MoD. The reason is simply that, while ten years ago military “games” were state of the art, the explosion of X Box and Playstation and the massive investment in the industry since then has meant that the private market has suddenly outpaced anything that’s available to fighting professionals.
The answer, says the director of Project Kite (Knowledge Information Test Environment) at Portsdown, is to develop the MoD’s own games, with production values as good as the commercial ones, but with more attention paid to realism, of course. Already the first product, Virtual Battlespace, is saving lives in the field.
I love the idea of this creative and attractive way of saving money. There’s one small niggle, though. Using actual equipment (and actual people) on exercise can bring to light problems with gear and procedures before they cause injury. I hope the balance between live and simulated training can be found, because using stuff for the first time on deployment, however good your computer-trained reaction, could lead to people getting hurt. They will make compensation claims, of course, and that could take a bite out of the savings.