ORLANDO, Fla. — Training needs to be designed to address the shrinking military services and to cope with more capable adversaries, Vice Adm. Bill Moran, the US Navy's chief of personnel, said Tuesday in his keynote address at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education (I/ITSEC) conference in Orlandohere.
With a shrinking budget, the military has to learn how to do more with less and get more out of its training through simulation, learning to do more with less, according to Moran.
And the services also need to ramp-up modeling what it will be like to fight adversaries with growing war-fighting capabilities, in their war-fighting repertoires such as electronic and cyber warfare.
Russia, For example, Russia's has exhibited the use of innovative electronic warfare tactics against Ukraine over the last year that has served as a wake-up call for US forces training Ukrainian soldiers in theater.
The number of training systems that are starting to emerge that incorporate what it's like to fight while stressed or while hurt is encouraging, Moran said.
"Those are the types of things we have to look at," he said. "We haven't really had to fight hurt. ... We are going to have to learn to do that because it's going to come to us at some point."
Moran noted, however, that he was not necessarily talking about incurring damage from missile attacks or other kinetic means, but through cyber attacks or electronic warfare.
The development of live, virtual, constructive (LVC) training is valuable in addressing some of the challenges the US military faces when it comes to preparing the services to fight, Moran said. LVC combines a mix of live and virtual training.
For example, an F-16 pilot in a live training flight can transmit data down to another F-16 pilot in a simulator on the ground. The F-16 pilot in the simulator can fly as the airborne F-16 pilot's wingman.
While LVC is "exciting," Moran said, he was "disappointed" that while the hope last year at I/ITSEC was to improve common standards across the services has not been achieved.
"We are not there yet," he said. "That is on us on the uniform side. We have got to get together and get to common standards to drive the cost down."
LVC aside, there's still room to improve the way the Navy trains, Moran said.
Moran said that tThe Navy brings in, on any given year, 40,000 people in on any given year, according to Moran, and that, eEach year, 30,000 or so are in training at any given time.
"We are moving in excess of 90,000 people every year," he said. "If you do the math ... remember we only have 326,000 people in the Navy, those ratios are awful for anyone running a business. They are primarily driven by sea-shore rotation, but they are also largely driven by how congested and slow our training pipes are."
Therefore, Moran said, the Navy needs to figure out how to pick up the pace and get more out of training. This means having better insight into the talent and skills of sailors coming into the fleet, but it also means recognizing that training "from boot camp all the way to the fleet and beyond" has to "fundamentally change."
Training methods and technology needs to be more modular, Moran said, and it need to be more mobile in order to deliver training opportunities to sailors wherever they are, Moran said.
The Navy has had some success stories, Moran added, such as its Digital Tutor, which that helps train information-technology warriors more quickly. The training program has tightened up from 37 weeks to 27 weeks, and those who that graduate are "on par with instructors."
But the Navy's not resting on those laurels. The service is now working on an advanced version that it plans to extend to sailors across the service, Moran said.
Also, the littoral combat ship was built with training in mind from the beginning, he said, which means it has "tremendous simulation capability." The Now the Navy is now looking at how to introduce avatars into that training.
Moran also said he was worried about the commercial world looking elsewhere to do business. The commercial training industry has started to see the value of simulation training in other areas outside of Defense Department applications, and it could divert its their attention there.
"We in DoD owe our industry partners a little bit more love here," he said, "to keep this moving forward."
Moran warned that if the military is unable to reduce the cost of training people, it will be unable to afford future platforms to provide capability that will be needed in the future. To do that, the services have to achieve commonality in their approaches to training.
Email: jenjudson@defensenews.com
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Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
