Sheila Vemmer / Defense News Media Group Col. David Lockhart is deputy director of the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation

The military and industry must increase the speed with which they develop and field training systems to help troops defeat the threat of improvised explosive devices, a top Army acquisition official said April 28.

“We’re looking for companies that can provide a capability just about right off the shelf,” Col. David Lockhart, deputy director of the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, said April 28.

“Don’t look for lengthy development times,” he told military and defense industry representatives attending the 2006 Cruise Missile & IED Defense Conference: Joint Engagement of Time-Critical Air & Ground Targets, sponsored by the Defense News Media Group, in Arlington, Va.

His Orlando, Fla.-based command acquires a range of systems for the Army’s training and simulation efforts — efforts he said have been focused on defeating the IED threat that has killed or wounded thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lockhart said the Army and Defense Department are moving to speed what can be a lengthy acquisition process, reacting quickly to requests from U.S. Central Command for new training capabilities. “We can’t wait for final requirements documents,” he said.

And his office is pushing to make a database of current requirements and needs statements available to provide industry “visibility on just what we need. Be looking for that to come out of Orlando sometime in the near future,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart outlined a number of live, computer-based and hybrid training systems the Army has developed to help train soldiers, members of other U.S. services and coalition partners on the IED threat. They range from an immersive simulator for combat convoys, to table-top computerized simulations that throw a variety of IED threats at the staff of a brigade, division or corps.

Among the biggest challenges, he said, is to increase the accuracy with which simulations reproduce the indirect effects of actions by an individual soldier or a unit. There is a need, he said, for training systems that mirror the Army’s growing focus on “nonkinetic effects” – operations that don’t involve firepower.

“When we’re in a situation and take a certain action, what happens then, and how do we respond?” he said. “When we engage people, do we create enemies as we engage them?”

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