Medics Get Their Own MOUTs

The past decade has seen Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT) training systems evolve from rudimentary experiments to sophisticated sites. Now U.S. Army medics and evacuation personnel are getting their own specially designed MOUTs, the first fruit of a five-year Urban Operations Training System (UOTS) contract with Lockheed Martin Global Training and Logistics.

Scott Turner, project director for the Combat Training Center MOUT at the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), visited personnel training at the new MOUT at Fort Campbell, Ky.

“They were beyond themselves,” Turner said. “They were very excited about having this capability. They showed me where they were training currently, and it was basically a makeshift warehouse.”

Awarded in late 2010, the UOTS contract is a five-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity deal worth up to $287 million to provide urban operations training for the Army, Army Reserve and National Guard. The program supports permanent and mobile training sites, as well as live, virtual and constructive scenarios. UOTS covers several standard configurations, including medical, mobile and combat training center MOUTs.

The medical MOUTs were the first out the door. The first seven were delivered to Army and National Guard sites in September and October 2011, less than a year after UOTS was signed. Lockheed Martin worked with PEO STRI’s medical simulation and Combat Training Center MOUT teams to rapidly create training systems for medical triage and evacuation.

Each medical trainer is built around three containers manufactured by UOTS subcontractor Allied Container Systems. Two containers make up the base, with the third container stacked on top with a balcony. Reconfigurable walls inside the container allow instructors to change the scenario and create new barricades each time a team goes through.

The MOUT is designed to handle realistic scenarios using messy props such as fake blood.

“The interior is coated so it can last awhile and be able to withstand that kind of training and cleanup,” said Kathy Moschella, Lockheed Martin’s UOTS program manager.

Moschella said the first round of UOTS deliveries was significant not only for the quick development time, but because of the necessity to train for urban triage and evacuation capabilities.

“They needed to train in this type of capability,” she said. “As fast as we got it fielded, they were using it for training.”

Medical MOUTs have already been delivered to Fort Riley, Kan.; Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.; Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Campbell, Ky.; Camp Atterbury, Ind.; Camp Shelby, Miss.; and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. By May, two more are slated for delivery to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and Fort McCoy, Wis.

At many of these locations, Medical MOUT will be used in conjunction with PEO STRI’s existing Medical Simulation Training Centers, Turner said.

“I spent 10 years in the military, and we did everything in a sand table,” he said. “Nowadays, they do everything for real in an intense situation, and when they come out the other side, they’ve got a much better appreciation for the fog of war that they’re going to experience.”

Upcoming Deliveries

Lockheed is preparing for several more deliveries under UOTS in 2012.

“The contract vehicle itself is an umbrella, and there are different groups within PEO STRI that put their work scope through this,” Moschella said

She said the company was on schedule to field an urban assault course at Fort Carson, Colo., in early spring. The course will include humanlike targets that can be moved to different rooms and buildings, as well as set up in various configurations. Lockheed will also install a training range with 10 of the humanlike targets.

The company is also gearing up to automate shoot houses in the fall that are currently under construction. Lockheed equips facilities for automation with cameras, servers, targets and battlefield effects such as improvised explosive device or gunfire simulations.

Automated shoot houses allow for live-fire training without the support of an operator — from the start of the exercise through capture of the event and after-action review. For example, an operator observing the cameras can either trigger a target to pop up as soldiers enter a room, or the target can be automated to reset when a group of soldiers exits the room and pop up again for the next group, said Jim Craig, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of training systems.

Craig said Lockheed is also preparing to add instruments to up to eight combined arms collective training facilities in late 2012 and into 2013. The large size and diversity of the types of buildings in these facilities creates an instrumentation challenge.

“If you have a MOUT facility with hundreds of buildings, to have half a dozen cameras to catch every angle in every room would create an enormous expense,” Craig said.

So Lockheed is offering lighter-weight, plug-and-play cameras that can be easily moved and reset quickly for different types of exercises in various parts of a large facility.

Experimentation

Lockheed can also propose new technologies under UOTS for the customer to integrate or customize, Moschella said. To develop new urban operations training solutions, Lockheed opened a new test bed facility in Titusville, Fla., as an internal research and development effort.

“It’s not formally a part of UOTS, but an investment Lockheed built specifically for this program,” Craig said. “It also has potential to be used to support other activities.”

The test bed will be used to test the technology Lockheed uses to instrument urban training structures, such as cameras, sensors and after-action review equipment. Craig emphasized its potential for experimentation, as well.

“You wouldn’t necessarily disrupt or modify an existing system to try out something that may or may not be ultimately what you want to do,” Craig said. “With this, you can experiment with no impact to war fighters.”