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Top 10 Virtual Reality Explore Tech Construct Implement Program Train Maintenance/Combat Troops

8/20/2020

Digital/Virtual Trainers are constantly trying to innovate and stay at the top of our game. Digital tools have become essential to our everyday workflows. They help us design better and faster, and provide cost savings as well as big improvements in worker safety.

Virtual reality VR has taken strides in recent years to become a contender in the tech realm. Its usefulness in industries beyond just buzzwords. Among many other benefits, Cost and Safety advantages make it likely VR is here to stay.

VR in engineering just seems to make sense when put in the perspective of what trainers are trying to accomplish through integration of the work tools.

VR may prove useful as a way to provide cheap and convenient training for combat as well as other activities like maintenance tasks. Using off-the-shelf motion sensors, an HTC Vive headset and controllers with a trigger and sensing pad, the program takes a service member step-by-step through an aircraft repair job, from diagnosing the problem to re-testing the part after the fix to make sure it works.

The system is still a prototype, but the plan is to develop an automated guide so troops can train on key tasks with little oversight, wherever they are.

In the loaded virtual reality maintenance scenario, a windshield washer pump needed to be replaced in a reconnaissance aircraft. Using the controllers, users could flip switches to test the pump, then perform the needed maintenance step-by-step in a 360-degree simulation of the aircraft.

“Certainly, you could do it with just about any aircraft, things that require troubleshooting,”

There are some things the system won’t do well. It can’t simulate resistance for more strenuous maintenance tasks, and a user can’t feel around in some area out of view to find a part, the way a maintainer might in a hard-to-reach area. But in an era of high operational tempo, when senior maintainers might be deployed or otherwise unavailable to train more junior troops, engineers envision the system will allow troops to meet training goals and maintain proficiency wherever they are.

The system is designed to be lightweight and easily deployable. Troops can complete a virtual training session, then send a video of the session to a supervisor located anywhere in the world for approval or correction.

Army is gearing to launch the first iterations of its new virtual reality simulators, which will lay the foundation for synthetic training environments at multiple bases.

A squad advanced marksmanship trainer will be delivered to several Army locations next year for close-combat troops. A squad immersive virtual trainer will closely follow.

The building blocks that will become the synthetic training environment, or STE, will eventually include computer-generated avatars incorporated into the battlespace, among other virtual military elements.

While the Army is looking for more personalised training, the new, simulated environments are intended to boost the collective squad, which would face a high-end threat together.

Army is looking at it from a collective -- a squad, a crew, a team, a platoon and then on up. But we have to get the individual piece correct in order to be able to do that.

Referencing the service's unusually swift acquisition effort and collaboration with industry, cross-functional team had been asked to be disruptive, and Army believes they have done just that.

"We have these abilities, and have seen it from our industry partners. Instantaneous feedback. While the Army is not there yet, the service is quickly moving in that direction.

Soldier lethality is one of the priorities of the newly-established Army Futures Command, a new four-star command focused on rapid research and development for future weapons and warfighting capabilities, as well as enhanced training options.

"There are systems that we're looking at that can allow the soldiers to train as they will fight, train where they will fight and train against who they will fight while back in the home-station training environment.

One option for the Army is next-level synthetic training environments, where troops can train individually or in groups in both fixed or mobile live, virtual, or mixed-reality battle spaces of all sizes.

This is a big deal given the inadequacies of some of the existing training platforms. The current training systems are limited in their capabilities. For example, the technology for the existing virtual trainers does not allow the Army to bring in all of the enablers, such as logistics, engineering, and transportation teams.

“We can only bring air, ground platforms, and a few other capabilities. We need to train combined arms to prepare for large-scale combat.

Terrain is also a huge challenge. "We are trying to get to one-world training. Terrain is a stumbling block We are trying to get after that quickly."

User assessment testing for re-configurable virtual trainers has began and within the next two years, the Army wants AI-driven trend and predictive analysis based on biometric and sensor data collected during training exercises.

"Right now, we are only as good as someone's experience and their eye and what they catch or what we see in video. "We want to be able to assess training, and we have some of that capability right now, but not to the degree we need."

A recent example of LVC training is the Air Force’s investment in a common software architecture for its training simulators, creating the Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards program. Also, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are all looking to connect simulators and live assets to enhance air warfare training.

As LVC technology advances, commercial off-the-shelf technologies play an increasingly critical role. By leveraging the advances in commercially available IT, DoD can gain significant advantages, including reduced development and deployment times as well as the ability to reuse capabilities to gain significant efficiencies. Advanced server technologies and cloud capabilities can maximise reusability and rapid reconfiguration of infrastructure for numerous training needs.

As the military continues to explore the use of LVC training and simulation, and blends real equipment and personnel with virtual assets, commercial off-the-shelf IT capabilities will enable high fidelity, speed and immersive training experiences to grow skills and develop proficiency for our military forces.

By combining LVC with the right network strategy, DoD can securely achieve significant benefits in costs and efficiencies, as well as lower stress on existing systems, reduce wear and tear on operational systems, and decrease the chance of mishaps, which can occur using traditional live training. Building LVC capabilities on a sound network architecture minimises risk and ensures the mission is accomplished.

Somebody has to spearhead the request for implementation. If there is a greenlight and a budget to implement a VR system for product design, they should always be willing to show engineers and designers in their organization exactly how learning to use VR will help them expedite various workflows. People in organizations and institutions become set in their ways and are weary of adopting a new technology that purports to convenience them but instead does the opposite.

If you are the one who is pushing for a VR system, be prepared to sell everyone on its benefits. You have to demonstrate why VR is right for your product design team. VR can easily seem unnecessary if a skeptical employee isn’t interested in trying it. Suggest pain points that VR can help them with informally, then do something like show them their own 3D design in VR to help them understand practical reasons for integrating VR into their product design workflow.The challenge of finding existing ROIs shouldn’t deter you from creating your own.

Once the VR system is maintained at your organization, track how often people are using it, what they are using for, and why they are using it. These records can help you create estimates for potential gains.

Calculate cost avoidance and be prepared for grey areas that require approximations. If a product design team finds a problem with a design in VR, it can be hard to determine whether or not the issue would have been found without the VR system. Compare VR usage with typical prototype cost data, and offset the cost of implementing, operating, maintaining and troubleshooting a VR system against the cost of physical prototyping.

Not only might VR help your product design team improve processes along the product’s lifecycle, but the team itself will benefit from learning the ins and outs of installing, operating, maintaining and repairing a VR system design.

VR is just a single, tool not a catchall solution for every bottleneck in product design. VR systems for product design are being adopting more frequently, so new hardware and software skills may eventually be required for navigating and getting the most out of immersive computing technology at your organization

The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.

Early models of VR systems tend to be costly. However, as the technology advances, it may become more affordable. In the case of firefighting, VR training like other online training products can reduce fuel costs and other expenses. It’s possible that in the future VR training will be available to firefighters in locations all around the world.

When you need high-risk or high-performance training, you’re usually talking big budgets. Training a construction worker , or soldier with comprehensive and realistic training is expensive — and the real-world costs of improper training in any of those professions is ever higher.

The virtual reality simulations will enable a low price training by reducing the cost of training material, trainees safety costs, trainers salaries, and more. This huge opportunity is taken as a challenge to make training smarter and easier to access for every trainee.

With virtual reality, you can deliver customized, realistic training experiences for a fraction of the cost. Then you can provide that virtual experience or even have trainees train together anywhere in the world without anyone needing to travel.

All the training in the world is worthless unless it sticks. While VR Training is still relatively new, there is a lot of research around what helps trainees to retain their training. Many of these factors are inherent characteristics of virtual reality training.

VR tech is fairly accessible to the modern trainer if they want to get their hands dirty but it may soon be more mainstream in the future of making things and workplace training.

Hands-on experience has proven to be the best way to retain new skills. Virtual reality, in contrast to classroom training, gives you the opportunity to provide this realistic on-the-job training experience.

1. Create a More Engaging Training Experience

Virtual reality training forces trainees to get out of their seats and practice the learning objective. As the name implies, you’re getting as close to real-life training as possible. VR gives you the ability to go beyond telling trainees what they will experience in the field and showing them instead; placing them in those actual scenarios and experiences without the risk.

2. Push Limitations of Traditional Training

There are a lot of real-world scenarios that you can’t encounter, simulate, or sometimes even explain in the real world without unacceptable levels of risk or cost. Virtual reality busts through these limitations. You can literally design and produce the impossible and then transport your trainees right into the middle of it.

3. More Practical Hands-on Approach

Traditional training, at best, shows pictures and videos of the “right way” to do things. Layered on top of that you might drill some lists and devices to help trainees remember the steps when they have to perform the task or procedure in the field. Good luck getting it right the first few times in the field.

Virtual reality training gives you the ability to give your trainees practical hands-on exercises the first time and as many times as it takes for each to get it perfect before they ever do it in the real world.

4. Make Serious Mistakes — and Walk Away From Them

Safety and costs often prevent us from allowing trainees make and learn from their worst mistakes, yet experiencing the consequences of those mistakes — getting complacent, being sloppy, or just momentarily slipping up — provides us with some of our best training opportunities.

Virtual reality gives you the ability to let trainees make all their mistakes, even the potentially disasterous ones, in the safety of a simulated world then try again.

5. Speed to Train

VR training isn’t limited by facilities, location, or even instructor availability, in many cases. This advantage enables you to get every employee trained and ready to perform in the field as fast as they achieve competency in the virtual world — in fact, possibly faster.

6. Delivering Results to a Wide Range of Industries

Continued learning and increased efficiency are staples for any company or institution worth its salt. Absorbing material quickly, optimizing application, and streamlining interaction/workflow directly influences the bottom line.

7. Appealing to a Variety of Training Styles

Classic teaching and training methods convey content to students according to the instructor’s preferred style of learning. These styles are classified as visual, auditory, tactical, and kinesthetic. But what if multiple styles of learning could be satisfied simultaneously? With VR learning, this is a new reality.

Although recent studies have raised questions about the utility of addressing certain learning styles, the fact remains that people have strong preferences for acquiring new skills and information. VR experiences access all the senses, a variety of preferences can be satisfied and delighted. It offers the ability to simultaneously reach students across at least three of the four classical learning styles. Among military specialists in particular, there is universal agreement on VR technology’s effectiveness and potential to breathe new life into traditional training methods.

8. Making Learning Interesting

Virtual reality simulations use basic principles of learning to produce compelling and memorable end results. We engage the user with breathtaking graphics, informative audio and interactive scenarios using our 3D virtual environments to give a sense of really being there.

9. Replicate Real-Life Situations

VR is used to create interactive scenarios which reflect real-life situations. Virtual reality e-learning can be used to simulate the way equipment responds; emulate the way machinery works or to replicate soft skills such as human actions and behaviour.

10. Perform training remotely

Instructor-led training often requires employees to meet at a specific training location. In addition to saving time on travel, trends in the workplace are leading to a decentralized workplace - people are now able to collaborate over a vast distance via video calls and in VR. VR headsets are becoming even cheaper, they can now be purchased for training and then implemented remotely. A trainee will be able to download and access the training material from anywhere.

Some workers can be limited in their access to it because of many reasons like distance. Virtual reality is a great solution to distance education which for some is a necessity. Instead of sitting in front of a computer reading or video chatting, students can get a full impression of being in a work environment.

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Top 10 Virtual Reality Reconstruct/Evaluation Team Ongoing Anti-Submarine Exercise Real Time Feedback

8/20/2020

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Navy continues to inject more live, virtual and constructive events to prepare ships’ crews to defeat potential threats, so surface warfare training officials are looking to add more realistic adversaries and tougher scenarios via virtual training.

Live, virtual and constructive (LVC) environments are playing greater roles in training, and are more the norm for strike groups getting underway for predeployment and certification exercises, and battle through realistic scenarios laced with virtual adversaries and faced off against real and virtual OPFORs including actual and simulated ships.

Ranges will be a key part as the Navy expands its use of LVC training and inclusion of more realism into scenarios. “When we take a strike group to sea, we are at sea conducting live training. We have live opposition forces out there, but they are augmented” with a blended presentation,and from the perspective of the training audience.

With the tactical displays – they can’t tell the difference between a live OPFOR and a virtual OPFOR presentation that stimulate their combat systems.”

It is critical that submarine commanders learn from the mistakes they make each day instead of waiting weeks or months for corrections.

An In-Stride Debriefing Team IDT participants in the air, surface and undersea domains understand each day what contributed to their success in finding the target submarine in that day’s serial, or if they didn’t find the submarine, what opportunities they had to detect the sub and why they missed their target.

In some cases, the issue could be as simple as operating a sonar at the wrong depth in the water column, where a simple fix could help the team find success the next day. In other cases, the lessons learned may be more complicated – but participants are finding out during the exercise while they can consult other experts and try to correct out their mistakes, whereas in other exercises they might not understand until weeks or months later what went wrong.

“Normally during most exercises you don’t get that sort of immediate feedback. So what we’re hoping to see is maybe at the beginning of the exercise the people shaking the rust off, if you will, to at the end of the exercise they are feeling really that they’ve gotten that feedback that they need in a real-time feedback loop such that their skillsets are improved.”

The capability is like a test where you can see the answer to the first question and know if you got it right or wrong before moving on to the second question.

That immediate feedback can help participants “see if you’ve improved and understand where maybe your mistakes are. And that’s incredibly important, because a lot of times in these exercises the ships, the assets don’t know if they got the answer right until weeks later after there’s been some feedback. So that real-time here’s the answer to Question 1, this is how you did, let’s take Question 2, is really important.”

For an example, say an exercise had nine submarines and 40 maritime patrol aircraft missions that were flown – but no surface ships at the time. All the data had to be collected when the aircraft came back from their missions, and in sorting through stacks and stacks of papers from the exercise, you realize that 75 percent of the missions were cold – the airplanes did not detect a submarine – and the aircrews would have no way of knowing if there was just no submarine in their operating area or if they missed it due to a mistake they had made.

“They were cold, and they don’t know why, if they missed anything.”

With just a little more information on the submarines’ actual tracks, you could figure out what detection opportunities were missed and, with perhaps with a little more information, why. For feedback, the snapshots are mapped out every interval or so, where the subs were versus anti-submarine warfare assets, and comments regarding what actions the crew took versus what they should have done.

“The idea is that the operations officer takes that aboard ship, gets the whole team around it and talks his way through it and picks up on what went well and what could go better, to accelerate the lessons learned process.”
The PBED process – planning, briefing, executing and debriefing – is above all else a way to improve proficiency quickly. “That is exactly what we’re doing here. So we receive the data, do the analysis and debrief.”

During tactical training, PBED process is enhanced by playback tools that allow operators to listen back to conversations on the bridge and re-look at what they could see on their screens at the time, to discuss in vivid detail what they knew and how they arrived at the decisions they made.

“Being part of Dynamic Manta, we’re constantly analyzing the tactics being used in each combined ASW exercise to provide lessons learned to all of the major players. During the debriefs, we have a chance to teach doctrine and help the participants from every community become a more lethal force.

Does the concept of wearing VR gear that digitally provides situational awareness create an upside that outweighs what it takes away for rifleman skills? With all these close-action skills, will augmented reality create more distraction than enhancement? Is it too early to push digital situational awareness all the way down to the soldier in maneuver units? Is the upside present?

How reliable are the sensors? Can the sensors be easily spoofed? Is it too early to push it all the way down to the individual soldier? A technologically advanced adversary will likely devote research to develop one-time use, tossable, simple, low-cost devices that can — in close combat — create spurious sensor data and derail VR. If the integrity of the sensor data is in question, it will likely force commanders to refrain from using digital tech.

A recent pilot program tested in the fleet to provide information systems training virtually to shipboard trainees proved promising enough that the Navy plans to implement it, enabling students to learn and work on the exact systems they will operate on their ships.

The Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services CANES Training Virtual Environment will provide a workshop, using displayed network connection and linked up with an instructor for training that’s realistic, relevant and up-to-date with their particular ship’s systems.

Trainees and instructors have grappled with training that hasn’t replicated or fully reflected the onboard systems infrastructure that sailors encounter when on their ships, which can vary by ship. While the Navy had fielded to the workshop the same equipment the fleet uses, shipboard trainees haven’t always had the latest technology available.

“It’s hard to keep up with the technology refresh rate on all the things when you’re trying to modernize a fleet, so over time, the equipment we are training our CANES operators on became out of date and out of sequence with the majority of the fleet.” Often, “whatever trainees would see in the fleet would not exactly be what they would see” in the workshop simulator.

So the virtual training environment ensures that’s no longer the case, and trainees will learn from training virtually on systems with the look and feel of the same systems and versions installed aboard their ships.

Here’s how CANES TVE works: A trainee logs in and selects the particular version of CANES on their ship for whatever they are training to, and the instructor sets up the virtual environment. “It send a series of instructions to the network, and it would be built into the virtualized environment.

The servers that make up the CANES stack. It would be fed back to the trainee, and they would see the environment, and it would replicate and operate exactly like their version” on their ship.

The CANES TVE was ran through a pilot program with the forward-deployed naval force while both ships were pierside. They were able to bring up the instruction, with a facilitated instructor, and do that kind of background training that they couldn’t do otherwise.”

“Debrief is the most important part, that’s how the guys get all their lessons learned. So we construct the maps with detailed tracks, depth movements, detections, and commanders’ commentary on what tactical thinking drove their decisions.

The we got the chance to interact with the squadrons and the surface ships and submariners and poke them to talk about what they did and how they can improve.”

1. Transfer lessons into real life scenarios

For many construction companies, the problem with traditional training methods is . With VR, a construction company can create realistic scenarios in a 3D environment, making any skills learned all the more transferable. Consider the example of a crowded city street you can replicate the situations your workers will actually find themselves in. Trainees can develop essential skills through in-depth, vivid imagery.

Too often, we rely on assumptions, or even worse, accident reports to develop and assess our safety procedures. This approach is made even more ineffective by the fact that construction safety is often dynamic, based on the current project plan, available equipment, and working conditions/environment — all factors that probably should require refinements in on-site safety procedures.

With virtual reality training tools, we can construct scenarios that are specific to the job site or project planning scenarios and then realistically and safely test and evaluate those procedures. You can also test project plans to ensure that you are creating project plans that are realistic and can be safely executed.

2. Better Performance

Complex projects and problems for training can be simplified with difficulty levels and choices, easing the mind of both the trainer and the trainee. By training in a controlled and suitable environment, it means that trainees can perform to their best ability and focus on the task at hand rather than being concerned about the safety of other workers.

3. Ability to Create Riskier, More Realistic Training

Creating physical construction simulations has so many limitations. Try finding a training facility that can accommodate a superstructure, swinging tons of steel with an enormous crane, or pouring thousands of pounds of cement footing.

We build structures to reasonable heights, we swing simulated loads, and we role play or inject equivalent distractions. The limitation of the physical world, training budgets, and rational risk tolerances force us to train in environments that can only simulate a tiny fraction of the real risks and hazards of a real job site.

Virtual reality training allows us to push training exercises to the very edge of realism, up to and including hazards and actions. Simulating the actual hazards and results of following or not following safety procedures is one powerful advantage. We can practice most, if not all, of the hazardous activities that a worker will be expected to perform in accordance with the project plan. Also, they can practice these assignments under the same working conditions they will experience on the job site.

With VR training you can also introduce the realistic sensations of heights, distractions, stress, and environmental hazards. These intangible hazards are often missed in training because we simply can’t push the risk envelope.

4. Virtual Reality Training Allows for Endless Repetition

Repetition is the secret to mastery, a well-defined discipline can be achieved with hours of deliberate practice. In construction, that kind of repetition is prohibitively expensive, and consequently, the majority of that deliberate practice necessarily takes place on-the-job.

Virtual reality training has the power to make this level of deliberate practice much more, well, practical. The incremental cost of running a VR training scenario is de minimal, unlike more traditional training in the physical world. With VR training, workers get to strap on the VR headset and go at it again and again until they can accomplish the task flawlessly — and safely.

5. Training Can Be Customized for Specific Sites, Scenarios, and Standards

Every company and job site is unique. And no matter how consistent we try to be with construction safety, the real-world will always throw some curveballs our way.

Each project will likely have its own special challenges and problems because of location, unique requirements, weather, or just the complexity of the project itself. General construction safety training can leave workers exposed to or unfamiliar with local job hazards.

Virtual reality tools provide a huge advantage in the flexibility and costs to offer site- and company-specific construction training.

Physical training facilities rarely can be reconfigured to approximate any particular job site realistically. And most construction projects can’t absorb the lost time and additional cost of shutting down portions of a job site for training.

Necessarily, with increased customization comes increased cost, but these costs will almost certainly lower in comparison to those of closing a real-world job site for one or more days for training purposes, or the inherent risks of on-the-job training for the same purpose.

Further, different companies often have slightly different ways of doing things; specific protocols and standards that help define how a company operates. Premium VR training can accommodate these variations for a more tailored training experience.

6. Virtual Reality Can Make Training More Efficient

Many of the benefits that we have reviewed so far point to the overall efficiency and effectiveness of virtual reality over traditional, physical training environments. Virtual reality training allows for your construction training safety programs to be far more relevant, site-specific, frequent, and repeatable without significantly increasing cost or time. In fact, studies and real-world applications of VR Training show it drives down the time needed to learn the same information usually taught with more traditional training methods.

7. VR experiences can build extreme environments and situations

Virtual Reality Provides Practice in extreme Environment to Test and Evaluate Procedures. Firefighters and military personnel need to learn how to respond in dangerous situations without risking their lives. , allowing users to test and learn without severe consequences.

This not only eliminates risk, liability, and injury; it also allows users to more easily train and master procedures, so, when the time comes, they’re prepared for the real deal. Added bonus: With greater safety, comes fewer costs.

8. Behavioral Interaction/Response

Workers get excited for new impressions. Virtual reality immerses students into a realistic environment that makes the experience really memorable and the educational process more enjoyable. VR displays different places around the world. Trainees showed more interest and engagement in learning about the locations they visited virtually.

Behavioral skills should also be taught, like learning how to interact in a group. In the VR experience, the participants see only a representation of other students. Interaction with digital avatars makes such sessions easier. At the same time, a carefully written plot adds real value to the experience.

9. Control Movement of Objects

What helps us connect with our environment in the real world? It is the ability to easily touch and feel the objects around us, isn’t it? But what happens in a digital world? For long, we have relied on keyboards to facilitate this sense of interactivity. But now, with virtual reality, we can gain a more natural sense of interaction by moving the objects around and by even controlling data streams. You can gain a deeper analysis of data quickly and easily to make faster decisions and improve employee efficiency.

10. Virtual Reality Training Research Indicates Higher Retention

Sitting through the class, passing the test, and getting the certificate is of no value if you can’t recall your training when you face the situation in the field. Knowledge retention is critical, especially for specialized training that focuses on protocols that will only be encountered occasionally, if ever in real life but which have to be performed more or less perfectly when they are.

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Top 10 Virtual Reality Simulation Train Tool Increase Success of Call For Fire Missions Across Battlespace

8/20/2020

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We understand that implementing VR is a long process that is just now at the stage of proving the concept; with setbacks and successes, where are we on the learning curve? Synthetic learning environments have already matured and provide an ample opportunity to use the technology with a high return on investment.

The opportunities reside in knowledge transfer, sharing experiences, preparing for an ever-changing operational environment, and by doing so, increasing soldiers’ survivability and ensuring mission success. The question is: Are we ready to rely on virtual systems in combat?

Marine VR training kit includes a range of virtual and constructive training systems, as well as supporting systems like drones and GPS trackers that enhances the whole continuum of training.

The suite begins with an Interactive Tactical Decision Game, where a small unit leader could be presented with a situation, see the available resources, and start to map out a plan. The Augmented Reality (AR) Sandtable then allows the small unit leader and up to three teammates to view three-dimensional terrain with AR goggles and begin to think through the positions of machine guns In the Virtual Battlespace, where each Marine is represented by an avatar, and the Marines can run through scenarios with as many repetitions as they want.

Once the units are ready to move into live training, a force-on-force training system puts a GPS tracker on each Marine and a laser system on their weapons to track who was where during the training scenario, who hit their target, who was shot and more. That data, supplemented with time-stamped data from drones, Go-Pros and other sources, is imported into the Smart After-Action Review Tool.

Marines in fire-support units now train to coordinate artillery, mortar and naval gunfire from a handy, ruggedized tablet. The Target Handoff System version 2.0 THSv2 allows Marines to quickly establish GPS coordinates for accurate call for fire missions.

"It is a modular equipment suite that provides the warfighter with the capability to quickly and accurately identify and locate targets and transmit that information digitally to fire support systems or weapons platforms.
The Marine Corps has begun making tactical tablets a regular part of Marine kit, such as the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Common Handheld MCH, a system that helps small-unit leaders navigate and disseminate orders, graphics and digital data pertaining to a mission.

BMCH is primarily used for situational awareness on the battlefield, while the THSv2 feeds information to the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System and other fire-support and weapons platforms. The call for fire tablet allows Marine Air-Ground Task Force units to view an updated satellite image of a location's topography, according to the release.

It also "decreases the probability of incorrect data transfer of the initial fire request by providing a digital communication link between the observer and fires platform.

Since its fielding, the THSv2 has been popular with Marines who have used it during live-fire events and other training,

"The system is robust enough to be expanded upon. We're looking to provide the warfighter with the best equipment to engage the enemy faster and more efficiently, and THSv2 does that."

New portable AEGIS virtual mobile platform trainer designed to keep combat watchstanders proficient during extended maintenance availabilities when a ship’s AEGIS suite might be secured for upgrades. It also provides the unique opportunity to train and qualify new watchstanders in preparation for upcoming patrols.

“At CSCS, our primary mission is to train Sailors how to fight and to win. Tactical proficiency requires year-round preparation and the ODT is a portable training tool designed to keep those tactical skills sharp and in turn, improve combat readiness by providing better trained, better qualified Sailors to the fight.”

“While a ship is upgraded, many of its most experienced watchstanders will transfer. We are now looking to exploit those transition years. More upfront opportunities to train as a team like this will deliver a better ship to the Navy and tougher fight to the enemy.”

With six mounted consoles and a pair of large screen displays, the ODT is designed to virtualize the combat suite of today’s cruisers and destroyers. Software applications also allow the ODT to be reconfigured between the various AEGIS baselines and builds of the current surface inventory. As follow-on builds are introduced to the Fleet in continued AEGIS Speed to Capability ASTOC upgrades, those same tactical codes will be installed in the ODT for immediate use.

“This is exactly what the fleet needs. “Our short time in the lab has already proven valuable. Whether you are shaking off rust as a seasoned watchteam or trying to build a new watchteam from the ground up, the ODT is your new venue for proficiency.”

A new Air Force driving simulator is making a big difference for airmen training on specialized vehicles. The chance to use a simulator gets airmen used to handling the vehicle, giving them a leg up on their training.

"It's a great training tool. "It provides the most realistic experience in helping drivers learn how to operate specialized vehicles before operating the real deal."

The state-of-the-art simulator offers training on nearly 30 different vehicles, anything from fire trucks, buses, tractor trailers and military vehicles such as Humvees and MRAPs.

The simulator offers about 150 preset scenarios and can generate nearly any driving condition imaginable, as trainers control variables such as weather, road conditions, visibility and malfunctions.

Three 55-inch screens and surround sound give trainees an interactive experience very similar to real-world driving.

"The biggest thing this will do is get people used to a vehicle before getting in that vehicle.“ Their training will be so much more successful if they have general knowledge of how a vehicle works before actually trying to drive."

Results from field of operations continue to reaffirm the overall effectiveness of virtual reality training, especially in scenarios targeted explicitly at the challenges of delivering construction safety training.

The bottom line is construction safety training is a non-negotiable expense. However, if you can do it at a fraction of the cost and time, and it’s more effective than the alternative, then the business case for VR training becomes overwhelming.

Consider a scenario where worker enters the job trailer, after orientation, he grabs his harness. Giving it a quick once-over he puts it on along with the rest of his safety equipment, like every other day for months.
On his short walk over to the construction elevator.

A quick and sudden jerk brings him back to reality as the elevator abruptly stops and opens to a scaffolding catwalk, three stories up. After a little over a month on this job site, this view is pretty standard stuff. He hooks up his safety line and walks out to where he’s working this morning and gets to it.

A little over thirty minutes into the job, he reaches down for a tool and realizes the platform is giving way under him. Just as what’s happening fully hits him, he tries to grab for something, anything to stop his fall.

Just as he begins to panic, he lurches to a stop. He thinks, “My harness!” Thank you for that.

Today workers are doing fall protection training in a safe, but shockingly realistic, virtual reality training environment. But, the missed fracture in the D-ring on his harness is an oversight that is not likely to ever go missed again.

Our ability to identify and assess risk is acquired through training and experience. In the case of construction workers, this training can be just as dangerous and unforgiving as the actual day-to-day, on-the-job experience. Which is precisely why the benefits of virtual reality training for construction safety is so compelling.

1. Immediate Engagement

Immediate engagement with VR means no distractions. The scenery is so vivid, attractive and engages participation so that every trainee becomes involved 100%. Equally, if one doesn’t move in VR, nothing happens. Therefore, full participation is required. That is how a trainers can develop fast reflexes, attention to details and quick thinking in workers all thanks to VR. In addition to that, that is how a trainee ends up enjoying participation in class.

2. Beats Complexity

Complicated pieces of equipment, processes or systems can be recreated using a number of techniques. This form of VR training allows users to learn about mechanisms and processes that would be physically or logistically difficult to do so in other conditions.

Thanks to VR we can thrive when it comes to complex matters, such as maintenance and engineering. It is known that great results are 20% talent and 80% hard work. A theory is nothing without practice. Also, there is a thin line when it comes to a simple experiment and learning how to operate in the real world that requires state of the art equipment.

Training in virtual reality steps in. It enables many people to gain experience in something usually hard to come by rather easily. VR can simulate nearly impossible and dangerous events and scenarios that cannot be experienced in a normal environment like driving, car mechanics and much more in a completely safe environment. Basically, virtual reality can help create a bigger number of highly skilled professionals in different areas as soon as they step in the classroom.

3. Innovative Technology Solutions

Virtual reality enables the creation of any surrounding. So, workers can learn how to react to different situations and surroundings, including meeting digital avatars from all around the world. Using VR in training can only lead to creating a more innovative technological solution, because only when we are intensively using something we can truly test it and improve it. Therefore, VR can support efforts in creating engaging and better-educated students.

4. Improved Space

You are surrounded by data 360 degrees. That means there is room for more data and one could gain access to even the minutest of details. Virtual reality trainer terminal clearly showcases this advantage. Space is no more a constraint for data visualization.

When it comes to a classroom environment, students often have trouble engaging for long periods of time with limited stimulation. But when the classroom suddenly transforms into actual battlefield scenarios, enthusiasm is inevitable.

A VR environment encourages information retention by offering training fresh, immersive learning opportunities. With customizable sessions, the responses of the teaching module can also evolve as the workers improve and retain.

5. Skills assessment and data collection

How do you assess an workers aptitude for new position in the organisation? How do you evaluate performance based on quantifiable data? Workers introduce a lot of variation during assessment of a candidates performance. Questions can be interpreted differently depending on the person or there might not be sufficient data to properly assess the workers skills.

6. Better way to practice

Lessons are nothing without practice. VR makes a typical traditional experiment into an exciting experience Virtual reality allows workers to experiment with things they don’t have access to or take a usual practical lesson to a new level. Many skills trainees want to master may be potentially dangerous or impossible to conduct in traditional settings. In such cases, the necessary environment can be simulated virtualy like driving or vehicle mechanics. Safe experiences have great educational value as trainees are able to try themselves how everything works and improve their skills.

7. Controlled environment to learn

VR provides a safe and realistic way to train, without the risk of injury or costly damage to expensive equipment. Some immediate use cases which highlight this like where workers can learn how to operate heavy equipment without needing to actually be inside one and firefighters can simulate dealing with fires without putting their lives at risk. Using interactive training techniques that manuals and videos can’t provide, workers can experience, make mistakes and learn through repetition, which is often impossible in the real-world when it puts the organisation at risk.

8. Improve skills faster through experiential learning

VR enhanced training compared to traditional learning tools speeds the development of mastery and expertise through repeated experiential learning that broadly engages multiple learning systems and is scalable. Learning by doing has long been established as one of the most effective ways to improve a skill. When you perform the task over and over again in a realistic setting, you improve that skill much faster than if you just read or watched a video about it.

9. Real Life is Random. Virtual Reality Tools Can Generate That Randomness

We all know that the world is full of random moments. However, when most training is being designed, that kind of unpredictable randomness — interruptions, distractions, weather, changes of all kinds — is marginalized or removed in order to maintain focus on the teaching of core concepts. Unfortunately, when this is done, realism is reduced and training becomes less contextual and relevant to the real world.

We often think we’re basically “stuck” with this less-than-optimal training for a variety of reasons. The two most common challenges in randomizing training are cost and trainee evaluation. In the physical world, it is simply too expensive to build the requisite number of training scenarios. In this same constraining physical world, it’s difficult or impossible for trainers to effectively evaluate trainee performance when there are too many extraneous secondary scenarios and variables.

Once again, virtual reality tools remove those barriers. The best VR training modules are just now introducing randomization of the kind you might experience in a high-quality video game. Randomization ensures you never “teach to the test”, or allow trainees to temporarily memorize “the hard parts” of certain lessons — things they might quickly forget after the completion of their training. What’s more, this randomization comes at no increase in cost and leverages one of the most significant advantages of premium virtual reality training: much of the trainee evaluation is baked into the tool itself.

10. Immersive VR Training Can Reduced Distraction Increase Focus

Keeping people motivated during both online and in-person training sessions can be a challenge. When employees put on a VR headset, the experience captures the learners full attention through both visual and audio stimuli - users are fully immersed in the virtual environment where they can learn distraction free leading to higher retention rates and overall less time spent training.

How many times have you been in a training room and your attention wanders? Thinking about lunch, returning a text message, wondering why you’re covering this again, just waiting for it to end and filling your energy with other things are only a few examples of all-too-human distractions that can degrade the training process. Sitting in a classroom or even waiting in line for your turn on the platform are all limitations of the physical training environment; restrictions that allow for trainees to lose focus and miss critical points of instruction.

Virtual reality has the advantage of being fully immersive. Because VR training strives to fully replicate the physical world and all of the disparate elements in that real-world, you have to stay on your toes at all times. And while, depending on the supply of hardware, some trainees may have to wait to get into a VR headset, others can follow along, watching their journey and lesson unfold from a first-person perspective on a nearby HD screen, turning passive waiting into active learning.

This realistic and immersive training environment helps trainees maintain their attention and concentration on each training task posed to them.

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Top 10 Future Requirements Create Multi Domain Battlespace Logistics Network Supply Troops Equipment

8/10/2020

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Creating Battlefield Space Logistics Networks brings capability required to defeat our adversary. We will have to forecast the needs of the Soldiers and their equipment. We will have to provide them with the critical supplies necessary to accomplish the assigned mission.

Even if Artificial Intelligence will allow us to have access to an instant feed on equipment status, logisticians must have the requisite knowledge to enable them to articulate relevant information when it comes to equipment status. We will be charged to relay that information in an accurate and timely manner to enable an efficient and effective procurement decisions.

Leaders will need to make decisions faster to succeed in future war. Decision-makers will require numerous sources of information and the ability to convert dense data into relevant information. What does that mean for Logistics? It means that leaders must improve their ability to process information and make decisions at the speed of relevancy.

We need to be able to explain the outcome of our decision-making process coherently to our subordinates and superiors alike. This will be challenging as some of the process will be automated and managed by artificial intelligence.

In strategic, operational and tactical support areas, the Army seeks to retain maximum freedom of action, speed and agility and to counter enemy efforts to attack friendly forces and infrastructure.The current dynamic—lethal and global battle space—has changed the way that sustainers provide support.

The Army’s sustainment system is transitioning to an expeditionary enterprise that is a tailored and responsive, centering around an end-to-end, distribution-based system that is capable of continuous, integrated and globally-synchronized operations. The evolving sustainment capability—precision, survivable logistics— is critical to support rapid power projection, MDO and independent maneuver.

Precision logistics, when properly executed, delivers forward support that provides a reliable, agile and responsive sustainment capability; enhances materiel readiness; lowers inventory consistent with the need to reduce demand; and reduces costs. Communication, speed and agility are key to its effective and efficient execution.

Survivable logistics is a vital enabler of U.S. military power, ensuring that it can withstand hostile actions and unfavorable environmental conditions. Without a resilient logistics capability, the effectiveness of Army and joint forces on a multidomain battlefield is severely limited.

Army has responsibility for providing logistics support to joint operations and campaigns, including joint over-the-shore and intra-theater transport of time-sensitive, mission-critical personnel and materiel.This requires that the Army have a suite of robust and agile sustainment capabilities operating throughout the entire three-dimensional battle space.

New logistics challenges have changed how we support the future fight. We have spent our entire military careers operating in theaters where our forces have superiority across all domains. Our forces executed resupply operations from the division rear area in relative security. We were able to appropriately prepare to provide logistics across the line of departure, but no longer.

Leaders must understand what the loss of domain superiority means for sustainment. Advances in technology and proposed changes to logistics leader development will shape the sustainer’s role in the future fight.

In order to understand how a sustainer must change, we must begin by looking at what will stay the same. Providing support has and will always be “providing support.” The way in which we do it will significantly change in the next ten years. However, the mission and the fundamental principles will always stay the same. The basic principles of Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration (RSO&I) will still happen.

However, RSO&I has previously been conducted near a Theatre in a relatively safe environment. Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) highlight that we might need to maneuver from strategic distances due to near-peer threat contesting us from strategic distances. The MDO tenet of “Calibrated Force Posture” might mean that we have more forces, equipment and supplies pre-positioned – subject to threat levels.

At some point in time we will have to network the coming together of the Soldier with their equipment. This creates the capability required to defeat our adversary. We will have to forecast the needs of the Soldiers and their equipment. We will have to provide them with the critical supplies necessary to accomplish the assigned mission. The reason there is not a multifaceted logistics approach to dense urban combat is because the fundamental sustainment mission does not change. In order to ensure maneuver does not culminate we have to continue to forecast and provide subsistence, fuel, ammunition and maintenance support regardless of the theatre of war or type of operation.

If so much will stay the same then what will change? Everything else, especially from a technological, procurement and execution perspective. There have been amazing advances in logistics technology around the world. Much of these advances are already in use by industry to great success. It will not be long before we see drones and other autonomous delivery platforms (air, sea and ground) executing distribution missions.

Quartermaster capabilities could soon include water-from-air technology, alternative sources of energy and additive manufacturing. Some munitions could soon be replaced by precision energy weapons. All this technology is already in existence. Soon, the average Soldier will have to work out how to employ it across all the domains, while not having domain superiority.

The Sustainment Battle Lab re-iterated that the number one threat that we, as Sustainers, face is that we will be contested continually, across all domains by our adversaries. While the principals of RSO&I will stay the same the execution of the process is forever changed by that consideration.

With near peer adversaries having global reach there will no longer be a haven location to prepare for deployment that is free from threat. Our forces will not have the freedom to stage in a location or neatly integrate into a theatre of operations.

If we are involved in Large Scale Ground Combat Operations (LSGCO) against a near peer threat we are always under threat from some form of attack. A joint multi-agency force will be required to set the conditions to create a period of superiority in some domains. This allows sustainers to enable the preparation and deployment of a force or capability.

Our ability to enable readiness will be paramount to the success of future deployments. We will need to offset the loss of relative security while leveraging the quantum leaps in available technology to provide the maneuver force with the right sustainment effects in the right place, at the right time.

How we get from where we are now, to where we need to be in the future relies heavily on the Logistics Branch. The way in which the Army procures equipment is changing. In the next ten years we will see a vertical approach to modernization; meaning that high readiness units, aligned to deter and compete with our near peer adversaries, will receive the newest equipment in a more efficient timeframe. Potentially, newer versions of that equipment before units with a lower readiness priority receive their initial issue.

This approach to modernization sets new challenges for our Logisticians and equipment Program Managers. How do we keep our maintainers in the high readiness units qualified on changing equipment variants? Can we design and implement a program that enables the supply system to track multiple variants of the same base equipment fleets? How do we simultaneously support rapid fielding of new equipment, turn in of superseded equipment?

The Acquisitions Corps is only going to be as effective as the feedback it receives from the field. Trained Logistics units are key to this process and will be the intermediary between the ground truth in the units and the feedback the Acquisition Corps receives.

We need to reevaluate our definitions of “readiness” and “fully mission capable.” This will shape how we training the future force. It’s not enough to be able to start a tank or fire a rifle. The force as a collective must be able to provide the required effect on the enemy or the terrain. Our lexicon must evolve to create shared understanding of logistical readiness in real-time.

Our job is about more than equipment management. We as logisticians are leaders of some of the largest formations on the battlefield. And must be experts in understanding and relaying the situation on ground to our higher commanders, staffs, and peers.

Convergence is an emerging problem-set of sustaining MDO. It’s the point in a battle where maneuver forces prioritize a logistics operation (e.g., refueling) ahead of a tactical task. At some point, maneuver forces will need to support logistics operations. They will need to converge at a time and place to set conditions and achieve superiority to support resupply. This must be built into the operational plan; it cannot be an afterthought in a concept of support.

Logisticians don’t set the conditions nor do they achieve the superiority required to enable resupply operations. But without resupply, maneuver forces can’t execute their mission. From a leadership perspective, asserting the need for prioritization of logistics over a maneuver tactical task requires situational awareness.

Sustainers not only need to be present in the maneuver planning process but also be able to articulate their needs. This includes the need for maneuver convergence in support of logistics and the risk associated with not prioritizing it.

Sustainers must be able to speak in terms of risk, both to the mission, and to our Soldiers. That language is common across the branches. Being able to clearly articulate our risk determination is critical in creating shared understanding. How we assess and then mitigate mission risk determines mission success.

As logisticians we must be the subject matter expert on sustainment capabilities in your command. We are responsible for informing the Maneuver Commander of the art of the possible, probable and impossible. Sustainment enables maneuver.

We need to know and understand who holds key information. Then we have to know what questions to ask and master the information processing systems available. We need to force ourselves to be part of the planning process and get a seat at the table.

Only then can we match our supported maneuver forces requirements and develop solutions for shortfalls. The rapid changes to technology and loss of assured domain superiority adds to the complexity.

We need to be able to explain the outcome of our decision-making process coherently to our subordinates and superiors alike.

This will be challenging as some of the process will be automated and managed by artificial intelligence.

We will need to create an environment to enable our subordinates to make decisions in our absence. Clear Commander’s Intent and the understanding and prosecution of the emerging technology available will be paramount to enable our subordinates to act in our absence and employ Mission Command.

Multi-Domain Operations represent a pivotal moment for Sustainers in the preparation of the future fight. If we develop requirements, understand capabilities, and provide creative solutions to shortfalls, we will ensure our maneuver partners can meet their future challenges with the support they need.

As an enterprise, we need to review the Multi-Domain Operations Concept and decide on what we need for the next fight. We must continue to evolve the way we sustain to sustain our forces on the future battlefield. Investing in the future will ensure that Sustainers have the necessary skills, equipment and capabilities to enable victory on tomorrow’s battlefield.

This framework is essential to the joint force’s ability to compete, penetrate, dis-integrate, exploit and re-compete in MDO environment:

1. Strategic Support Area

This includes: areas of cross-combatant command coordination and strategic sea and air lines of communication. The enemy may attack the strategic support area to disrupt and degrade deployments and reinforcements that are attempting to gain access to the operational support area and move to the tactical support area

2. Operational Support Area

This is where many key Army mission command, sustainment and fires/strike capabilities are located. The Army enables friendly operations in this area by dedicating significant logistics capacity to open windows of superiority. An enemy may target this area with substantial reconnaissance, information warfare and operational fires.

3. Tactical Support Area.

This directly enables operations in close, deep maneuver and deep fires areas. Many friendly sustainment, fires, maneuver support and mission command capabilities are in the tactical support area. Friendly units in the tactical support area must be prepared to endure threat fires and to defeat enemy ground force infiltration and penetration of the close area.

4. Installation Readiness

Infrastructure is vital to power projection and enables the Army to deploy ground forces, prevent conflict, shape outcomes and conduct military operations. Installations provide secure and sustainable facilities and infrastructure that support combatant commanders’ priorities, enable Army missions and maintain Soldier and unit readiness. To support large-scale combat operations (LSCO), installations must have the capability to marshal and mobilize forces rapidly. The Army has mandated that installations increase their resiliency by being flexible, effective and affordable and is working with service providers and users to reduce vulnerabilities at every installation.

5. Soldier Readiness

This involves a collaborative network of agencies, programs, services and individuals that promotes the readiness and quality of life for every service member. “The readiness of our Army depends on the readiness of our Soldiers to give them the ability to grow.”

6. Industrial Base Readiness

This is comprised of DoD/industry’s skills, knowledge, facilities, materiel and repair processes in support of Army products The Army’s arsenals, depots and ammunition plants must continue to meet the current surge and innovation requirements while industry leaders must help the Army to ensure quality, accountability and cost-effectiveness to modernize the force for the following decades.

7. Munitions Readiness

This focus area requires a ready and reliable stockpile, assured through optimizing the receipt, storage and issue of munitions. It provides the joint force with ready, reliable, lethal munitions at the speed of war. As the Army reduces excess or outdated munitions through demilitarization, the munitions industrial base must keep pace with the Army’s accelerated weapon modernization plan.

8. Strategic Power Projection Readiness

This is a function of the Army’s ability to rapidly project expeditionary and follow-on forces from fort to port, port to port and then port to foxhole while integrating equipment and supplies on the battlefield. The Army must build its capabilities and instill a mindset to be ready to rapidly alert, marshal, deploy and, upon arrival at a theater, be ready to fight. “We must use everything in our means—roads, railheads, airfields and ports—to rapidly link our people to equipment.”

9. Supply Availability and Equipment Readiness

This is the foundation of materiel readiness; it ensures that Soldiers and units have the right equipment, parts and materiel to achieve their mission at any time and any place. Efforts are focused on establishing the appropriate breadth and depth of repair parts available to minimize equipment shortages and to ensure that battle-damaged equipment is rapidly repaired.

10. Logistics Information Readiness

The Army has several systems to manage its materiel, maintenance, supply, acquisition and financial activities. Reforming logistics information readiness is critical to ensuring the right information at the right time and leveraging the Army’s enterprise resource planning systems. “We have a massive amount of data at our fingertips. Our ability to see ourselves is the first step in assessing ourselves. We need to be able to convert the data to force readiness quickly.

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Top 10 Tech Priorities Provide Value/Function of Info Architectures Battlespace Logistics Operations Management

8/10/2020

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Advanced Battle Management System is the leading candidate to be the backbone of a future Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2) network-of-networks linking all the armed services for many types of missions, including logistics.

The ABMS will be critical to mobile logistics needs and must evolve quickly, not conform to industrial-age requirements and schedules.

AMBS needs to be a cutting-edge, constantly improving network of radars, observers, and battle management to allow position of limited resources for maximum effect, aimed at exploiting the power of networked information to enable a limited force to prevail.

Artificial intelligence could pull together data from multiple sensors, each seeing the same target in different wavelengths or from a different angle, to build a composite picture more precise than its parts.

“We’re moving past just simple concepts of sensors and shooters. How do we get multiple sensors and shooters integrated do we get more out of them than an individual item could provide?”

“It’s not a specific sensor to a specific shooter. On a future battlefield… just about everything is going to be a sensor. So how you do you store that data and how do you enable a smart distribution of data to the right shooter? Because we can’t build architectures that are relying upon huge pipes and just massive bandwidth to make it work."

“If we can bring them together, you can use a sensor the Army already developed, bought and fielded to spot targets for one weapon – say, the Q-53 artillery radar – to feed targeting data into a totally different type of weapon – say, a Patriot battery.

The Army wants to plug in its new anti-aircraft and missile defense systems to the Network, but those technologies are at a critical juncture in their own individual test programs.

Army is also running tests with systems including aerial scouts, long-range missile launchers and armored vehicles.

Army has to test a sensor-to-shooter link that feeds data from a wide range of sources – in space, in the air, and on the ground – to an Army howitzer unit.

However, the Army had also wanted to experiment with new headquarters and organizations to command and control ultra-long-range artillery.”

That makes the stakes even higher for Project Convergence. “You can call it an experiment, you can call it a demonstration. “Right now, the plan is we’re going to do this every year… every fall as we continue to mature… this architecture that brings the sensors to the right shooter and through the right headquarters.”

GAO was highly critical of the ABMS program for lacking defined requirements, a program schedule, cost estimate, or affordability analysis. On the surface, this is a damning evaluation, given the terminal fates of similarly criticized programs like Future Combat System and the Joint Tactical Radio System.

But GAO’s methods of evaluation have been said to be outdated in today’s information age. The Air Force’s approach to ABMS should continue to center around a defined operational concept, not locking in technological requirements today that will only ensure obsolescence.

ABMS is a forward-leaning set of technologies that must be fluid if they are to remain relevant. They should not be managed and evaluated with industrial-era processes that strictly follow the rules that require a predetermined technical solution. That will simply guarantee obsolescence and a process too rigid to adapt to a set of dynamic threats. Instead, rigor should focus upon the operational concepts that underpin the fundamental design of ABMS.

Air Force has articulated a decentralized vision for an ABMS that promotes networked connectivity across platforms, domains, and even services. However, the effectiveness of any tool comes down to how it is used and how well it serves that purpose.

Networking is a foundational technical capability for ABMS, but the ultimate vision cannot be realized by simply connecting sensors and moving data. In fact, it could make problems worse.

Absent a clear operational concept, the availability of information could result in extreme micromanagement, given the propensity for senior leaders to reach into the tactical realm. Alternately, warfighters could find themselves drowning in data, universal availability of data could resulting in operational paralysis or operational chaos.

So far, Air Force “experiments” have focused on connectivity across platforms, domains, and services. But these highly scripted and rigid kill chains simply move data; they are not exploring the stickier problems of actual battle management. Instead, what must be demonstrated is how these ABMS technologies support future operational concepts.

ABMS will be successful if completely aligned with the air defense concept of operation. It can’t just be a collection of sensors and networks randomly closing kill chains. Leaders need to understand the larger battlespace to prioritize the threats, manage available assets, and link capabilities as the battle unfolds. It is this broader functionality that will enable the services to maximize its limited assets to prevail.

The Air Force must prove the value and functionality of its technical priorities in today’s systems and against future operational concepts. Instead of requirements, schedules, and cost estimates, the Air Force should develop an exercise, experimentation, and migration plan.

This plan should shift from today’s air battle management systems, like JSTARS and AWACS, to the future ABMS. Battle management is too crucial a function to retire on the promise of PowerPoint; a bridge is needed to the future.

The first step of developing this plan is envisioning what that that future combat operational concept is, and then shaping battle management functions to that architecture.

Information architectures and battle management concepts must align to operational concepts to deliver the speed, accuracy, relevance, and advantage future conflict will demand.

This means modularly inserting technologies into current battle management platforms as these new capabilities mature to a minimum viable product. The Air Force cannot rely on numerous technological consecutive miracles falling into place all at once. A gradual transition is how a seemingly unwieldy program can yield value and reduce risk in ways that past efforts like FCS and JTRS did not.

Finally, the Air Force should focus its experimentation on the fusion and decision functions of a battle management system. How does the system function with multiple targets and multiple assets with varying potential effects? What about the many support assets and actions? Experiments must also be tested with current platforms and tactics to be both backward- and forward-compatible.

If the Air Force’s ABMS program seems ambitious, it is. However, this is an endeavor driven by necessity. The realities of constrained budgets preclude the option of overwhelming combat power.

ABMS should not be assessed against traditional acquisition evaluation criteria that would ensure technological obsolescence. Instead, the Air Force must drive greater focus, vision, and alignment into its experimentation plan if it is to achieve anything close to a twenty-first century System.

And achieving that is not just ambitious; it is imperative.

The principal battlespace management commander first determines the mission and the specific tasks required to accomplish the mission. An example of a typical set of mission tasks might be planning, establishing a command post, securing routes, providing perimeter defense, and establishing locations for providing assistance.

Once you have identified your list of targeted resources to be profiled, you are ready to begin creating a profile for each one. The idea is for the resource owner to rate the resource's importance to the organisation from an information-security perspective and relative to all other assets in the organisation.

The profile tracks information at a business and function level and is not necessarily specific to implementation decisions. For example, if you are designing a new system, you should know what types of data will be processed and what the basic functions being performed will be before you decide on technologies or placement in the network.

When you are designing your profile questionnaire, it is important to note that not every question needs to be used in the calculation of the risk sensitivity. Some questions are meant to capture other pertinent information about the resource for reporting purposes and do not directly contribute to the risk-sensitivity score.

For example, you may ask a question about where the system is hosted. The answer to this question doesn't affect the sensitivity of the asset, but you may want to prioritise assessments of third-party hosted systems because of increased risk exposure, and the answer to this item will give you the desired information about which systems are hosted internally versus externally.

You may also want to ask a couple of high-level questions about whether basic security controls are in place for example, roles-based access, encryption, and audit logging. The answers to these questions may help you to focus your efforts on resources that don't meet the most basic security control requirements.

Similarly, you may want to ask if the system uses a common or central infrastructure for authentication and authorisation or logging to eliminate the need for assessing those areas any further. Systems using one-off solutions for these core security services may have more potential for risk exposure.

Factors do not change the sensitivity of the resource, but they can help with prioritisation. For example, whether or not a vulnerability test has been performed on the resource does not affect its sensitivity, but this knowledge is important for identifying resources that may have undiscovered vulnerabilities that are readily exploitable.

You will often find yourself trying to choose between several high-sensitivity resources to assess, and these other factors can help you decide which ones to focus on first.

The security risk profile questionnaire should include several questions about the resource to help determine the sensitivity and criticality of the application in comparison to others. It is essential to evaluate a resource's sensitivity on a relative scale.

Start by identifying the resource that is most crucial to the organisation, and use this as a reference point. This is important because the tendency is to rate resources too high. If you end up with all resources being rated as high sensitivity and none as moderate or low, then the scale becomes worthless.

You may not have defined the specifics of how the functions will be performed, but having business and functional requirements defined is enough to complete the security risk profile.

The best way to profile a resource is with a simple questionnaire. This questionnaire uses a series of targeted questions to measure the potential impact to the organisation of a generic security violation for the target resource.

1. Networking every shooter/sensor

Use artificial intelligence to ensure operational information is immediately sent across domains to any platform needing it.

2. Digital architecture, standards and concepts

Digital modeling/simulation technologies, trade studies and other standards development tools and processes to map out the entire architecture virtually and test how it would work in practice

3. Connectivity

Tools include line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight communications networks

4. Sensor integration

Hardware/software allowing different equipment to share data reach compatibility and interoperability capabilities through use of open interfaces improved control of systems and data processing

5. Data

Libraries of meta tagged data points analyzed/fused using AI algorithms to inform decision makers.

6. Secure processing

Tech moving/sharing data across technologies with different security protection levels

7. Training

Deployment, training and support services for all devices and processing environments.

8. Platforms

Tech turning platform into a data node, reduce latency, provide improved anti-jamming capabilities improve the speed/breadth of communications gear.

9. Applications

Design and development of apps to process, fuse and help present data to different audiences across domains.

10. Effects integration:

These involve networked weapons integrated with existing platforms for greater combined effect include data relay functions

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Top 50 Development Teams Lessons Digital Twin Supply Logistics Projects Execute Common Patterns

8/10/2020

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In the movement to digitize DoD enterprise and connect networks and more, a former supply chain buzzword has re-emerged with more momentum than ever… and confusion! The supply chain term “control tower” is used many ways, causing some vendors to meld its point solutions into a new layer of technology and tout a beacon of insights across the supply chain.

A lot has changed. Simulation and modeling software allow organizations to create realistic and verifiable digital twins of their supply chains. Data mining techniques along with sensors input allow them to feed real-time data into models. They can monitor and determine what's happening in the real world and plan the appropriate corrective action.

Digital supply chain twin represents a digital depiction of an organization's actual supply chain. At its core is a digital supply chain model that's essentially the same as a prescriptive analytics model used for advanced supply chain modeling.

While prescriptive models work with real data, a digital supply chain twin takes this capability further in that inputs are fed into the model in real time. As a customer's order is processed, the order and associated transactions are automatically fed into the supply chain digital twin.

To truly reflect the real world, its essential inputs which impact the supply chain are taken into account. For example, if production machinery goes down or a supply ship is late, this information should be sent to the digital twin of the supply chain.

To avoid reliance on manual input, network devices can be used to detect that information. Provided the model has intelligence such as the duration of the outage or when the ship will dock, the digital twin in the supply chain can determine the right corrective action and support supply chain optimization.

Although the concept of a digital twin for supply chain is relatively new, a number of major organizations have adopted it as part of their business model. It's being used in warehousing, electricity supply and in supply chain networks.

In one example, supply chain digital twin in a warehouse receives real-time data from the physical warehouse and continually tracks performance to identify optimal storage solutions
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Another example is energy companies can use a digital twin model to optimize pipeline nomination and allocate capacity. The energy market is complex and highly changeable. This model combines the organization's commercial arm together with its logistics function, allowing better identification of short-term logistics optimization.

Digital twins can also be used to overcome problems balancing turbine load under varying weather conditions, turbine supplier developed a digital twin so operators can monitor critical temperatures derived from virtual sensors on the digital twin to compute the motor temperatures, maximize performance and prevent overheating.

A parts supply company had difficulty producing sufficient high-margin products to meet demand. Using a digital model of business, they identified that perceived logistics constraints preventing economic manufacture were incorrect and, as a result, were able to meet demand, use the model to monitor performance and identify ongoing improvements.

The concept of a digital twin isn't new; the approach has been in use for many years in product engineering, flight simulators and Formula 1 racetrack simulators. What is different is the concept of integrating real-time data and inputs from the real world.

It’s possible thanks to the use network devices, the digitization of business activities and the introduction of powerful prescriptive simulation and modeling capabilities.

Supply chain digital twins allow companies to understand their supply chain dynamics. They reveal previously hidden information and help dispel preconceived notions. Delivery companies have identified numerous digital twin logistics and supply chain opportunities illustrates that the supply chain digital twin is more than just hype.

Some benefits associated with a digital supply chain twin include:

Dynamic optimization: Models aren't static, offering the ability to continuously optimize supply chain performance.

Greater insight: Digital twins offer greater insight into supply chain performance and its response to different inputs.

Supply chain transformation: The ability to understand the how and why of the supply chain opens previously hidden value

Deploying Digital Twin Supply Chains

When considering a digital twin supply chain solution, it's essential to evaluate how applications offered can meet your supply chain needs. What's absolutely critical is to be able to model your supply chain accurately.

For example, a digital twin should replicate constraints and be able to accommodate trade-offs. Digital twins need intelligence and the ability to analyze structured and unstructured data. They should be able to analyze multiple scenarios to provide the right actionable information.

Modeling tools should allow you to revise and update digital twins easily. The programming language should offer excellent visibility into the digital supply chain twin, its structure and formulae.

It's for these reasons that optimization modeling and prescriptive analytics solutions are a core component of a supply chain digital twin

Lessons learned through experience with Digital Twin efforts can provide insights for other efforts. Having many different Digital Twin approaches is appropriate, not conflicting, as there is no “one architecture to rule them all”.

Digital Twin provides the bones onto which specifications will be developed. It drives the standards development process, but must also be matured based on inputs from the community and the standards body itself. Do not think digital twin is ”done once”.

The work to form agreements on Digital Twin system requirements, architecture, design, acceptance criteria, etc is sometimes more about people/organization than technology. Do not let a single vendor or organization define specifications in closed settings, then “pull them out of the hat”

Success in developing Digital Twin solutions relies strongly on creating an environment of trust, open exchange of ideas, and consensus in the community, and then doing the work to document and manage change in a design.

Our effort defines a Digital Twin network-based architecture and interface specifications for integrating electronic systems in military ground vehicles, is being implemented in products and by vehicle programs, and the artifacts are being made available.

Digital Twin Configuration System Retains Product Supply Data Updates with Blockchain Facilitates DevOps Approval Transfer Speeds”

Digital Twin configuration is determined by the type of input data, number of data sources and the defined metrics. The configuration determines the value an organization can extract from the Digital Twin. So a Twin with a higher configuration can yield better predictions than can a Twin with a lower configuration.

What if the product configuration data required for being delivered via DevOps method can be recorded on a Blockchain? This would make the process easier, transparent for both and would eventually improve the quality.

Blockchain and DevOps are growing and gaining wide acceptance. These two products/process already offer so many advantages alone, but together they can provide tactical and strategic planned advantages.

The main response can center on the fact that on making product delivery chains which is DevOps, a more transparent and reliable method which is Blockchain technology.

Configuration management is important in DevOps because it helps you automate otherwise tedious tasks and allows an organization to increase agility.

Moreover, configuration management supports the DevOps big picture, and it’s widely agreed upon that configuration management is essential to DevOps, as opposed to being just another component of the process.

Configuration management takes on the primary responsibility for three broad categories required for DevOps transformation: identification, control, and audit processes.

Seeing configuration management as separate and aside from DevOps creates problems.

Comprehensive configuration management is essential to a properly functioning DevOps organization, as it lays the groundwork for far more automation than that which it impacts directly so enterprise businesses communicate better and function as a more agile development unit focused on continuous integration and continuous delivery.

By manipulating simple configuration files, a DevOps team can use application development best practices, such as version control, testing, small deployments, and design patterns. In short, this means Blockchain code can be written to provision and manage an infrastructure as well as automate processes.

"Digital Twin concept important is that computers have greater predictive skills that humans working with physical prototypes. “The digital twin a good definition of what we do. It’s a virtual representative of a physical product or operation.

The point is the precision we can reach. A lot of our technology acquisitions have been in simulation, test, and electronics. If we can improve the precision of the models we’re creating, we can predict performance.”

Performance Digital Twin. The Digital Twin for performance is based on tools enable insight discovery, analysis and monitoring from in-service products and production systems. Performance Analytics quickly identifies product issues disrupting the supply chain, manufacturing process or customer experience.

The performance Digital Twin may also include data analysis to discover hidden product issues before they occur; graphical displays to clearly identify potentially problematic configurations; and automated data monitoring to fine-tune operations and provide insight for improving your products.

1. Define “architecture” clearly

2. Identify elements and interfaces, and vet with the stakeholders

3. Common language: non-ambiguous, agreed upon terms

4. Domain specific, not generic is best

4. Select the modular elements and level of abstraction wisely

5. Line between architecture and design will vary depending upon the domain

6. Which elements are modular should be based on the goals, e.g. defines “on-the-wire” messaging

7. Define scope, and stick to it, consider problems driving cost

8. Provide legacy system strategy

9. Show how existing equipment adapts

10. Provide a pathway from the current practice to the objective architecture

Lessons Learned: Specifications

1. Agreements, not technology

2. Resist the urge find a new technology to solve the problem

3. Develop trust and agreements between stakeholders.

4. Engineers and scientists show patience in development

5. Design specification must come first.

6. Good enough trumps optimized

7. Explicitly define and make acceptance tests central, early and often

8. Formalize interface specifications

9. Information exchanges: data content and functions first, format and encoding later

10. Get the logical aspects down first, then move to details.

Lessons Learned: Organization

1. DoD holds the vision, works with a “core team” to define architecture and set up organization, and promotes to the community of interest

2. Steering body: leaders from the “customer base”, adopters who will eventually write contracts for and accept delivery of elements, help guide

3. Architecture lead: pin the rose on someone with experience and respect from community

4. Independent core support team:

5. Paid & contractually held to deliverables

6. No perceived “stake” in the decisions

7. Include domain experts

8. Specifications require input from domain experts for each type of interface

9. Specify as little internal component behavior as possible to allow for innovation

10. Data models are important, and must be non-ambiguous

Lessons Learned: Trust

1. Environment of trust

2. Ensure that all have access to the same information

3. Common portal or document base with as wide access as is feasible

4. Hold “open” meetings with documented minutes and actions

5. Ask opinions in open environment

6. Consensus-based process

7. Consensus can only be achieved if all parties feel heard, and you are willing to be flexible without sacrificing vision

8. No “formula” for consensus, but you know it when you get it

9. Ensure all decisions are supported and documented, and shared with all

10. Ensure that the consensus opinion results in feasibility/validation

Lessons Learned: Process

1. Plan for Validation: quality control on specifications

2. “Validation” step in the process before “publishing” specifications

3. Different individuals developing and evaluating/validating specifications

4. Open, documented validation plan and results

5. Develop acceptance criteria and test plan identify defects/hole during validation.

6. Compliance/Conformance Verification Plan: plan determining if implementations comply/ conform to specifications

7. Provide detailed compliance test procedures and documentation expectations as part of the process

8. Plan for if and how compliance will be certified

9. Provide reference implementation and any tools developed during validation to the community

10. Listen to domain experts, and put together “task teams” guided by core team to solve problems

Lessons Learned: Take-Aways

1. Architecture: Choose modular elements wisely, manage scope

2. Define legacy system strategy Specifications:

3. Concentrate on agreements, not technology

4. Tests/acceptance criteria are crucial, and eventually embody the specifications

5. Organization: Government and industry buy-in

6. Independent core technical support team

7. Environment of Trust: Openness to all, and consensus process

8. Process: Mature specifications through validation

9. Plan for verification of compliance /conformance with tests

10. Provide reference implementation and tools

Pitfalls

1. Getting bogged down in developing new tools: content and common understanding is the goal

2. Trying to solve problems not driving cost in the domain of interest

3. Being too general: attempting to teach domain to think in software terms

4. Being a ”first adopter” of a new, unproven technology, tool, or approach

5. Underestimating the need and cost of defining acceptance criteria and tests up-front

6. Allowing a single vendor to provide a specification.

7. Best specifications defined by vendors will be suspect

8. Unrealistic cost/benefit and schedule plan

9. DoD not having technical knowledge must engage/understand technical details as much as possible

10. Finding balance between under specification and over-specification

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Top 10 Application of Digital Marketing to Military Tactics Utilise Decision Info Advance Strategic Position

8/1/2020

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Modern Conflicts are learning competitions; so professional learning—continuing education—is fundamental to winning wars. As the strategic environment becomes increasingly complex, DoD must synchronize efforts across domains to maintain its advantage.

Achieving this goal requires planning and executing strategic response options utilizing a Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) framework. To become the world-leading standard in this complex environment, the MDO community must develop efficiencies to respond and innovate more rapidly and effectively.

Develop trusted information sources. When you have the opportunity, inquire about your competition's type of campaign, weaknesses and strengths from people in a position to know best; of course, with the advent of the Internet this has never been easier, something no General has had available before. Make the most of your sources of information to learn all that you can about your opponent. The secret of great warriors was in actual fact principally only previous knowledge, noted diligently and then well applied.

Marketers have been somewhat reluctant to incorporate AI in their digital marketing strategies. But now they’ve gained a lot more confidence in using AI since its ambiguity has been reduced with respect to the results it can provide. These intelligent tools keep evolving more and more and are even reaching a point in which they are able to surpass humans in certain aspects like we’re about to see.

Seeking a strong resource to inform your digital marketing? Look to the military.

Military strategy is defined generally as “the art of devising or employing plans toward a goal…to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions.” The purpose of the military is of course very different from that of a digital marketing agency—we do not typically engage in military combat with a competitor. But there are many parallels to be found between military and digital strategies, such as:

Know your end goal. One well-known, anonymous military quote reads, “Having lost sight of our objectives, we need to redouble our efforts.” Those words ring very true for digital marketers: If we lose sight of our objectives, our efforts will lose their effectiveness. We must always be working with the end in goal in mind.

Intelligence is paramount. There is an abundance of data available. Use it. Learn as much as you can before you act. The military never chooses a strategy without first gathering as much intelligence as possible. Neither should someone choosing a digital marketing strategy.

Survey your landscape. Take a cue from the military and know your territory well. Where does your business fit into the digital landscape? What outside factors may affect your goals? You can perfectly execute the tactics of your digital marketing campaign, but the campaign may fail if you overlook an important aspect of your landscape.

Tactics and strategies are not the same. The terms strategy and tactic are often used interchangeably, but both have different meanings. A strategy is an overarching plan that is developed to meet a long-term goal or goals. A tactic is one of various, specific ways you can achieve those goals. In the midst of your digital campaign, tactics may change in response to ongoing actions, such as a major news event or social media post. While your tactics may change, your strategy—and the major long-term goal you are working toward—will remain constant.

Flexibility is key. You cannot expect everything to go smoothly or as planned. One of the advantages of digital marketing is that it offers significant flexibility, particularly compared to more traditional marketing tactics. If you are willing to be flexible, you can adjust your digital marketing tactics in response to changes for a better outcome.

We know that strategy fundamentally depends on acquiring and using information to best control situations around us, and we make strategic decisions based upon what we see, hear and understand. For thoroughbred digital marketers who live in data for decision making, this might hurt initially… we don't really "know" what's going on. We feel that we never have enough information, don't we? We get paralysed by not having enough information, and equally freeze and get lost if we have too much.

Sound familiar? It might feel easier where we can see what we think is under our control, in an analytics dashboard for example, but it's misleading. We only see and control tiny elements out of the vast amounts of information. Control is the infrequent and misleading exception and chaos is the larger reality, and realising this is where advantage lies. Most information is unknown, or totally unknowable.

Our perception of reality is full of blind-spots, it's incomplete, a mix of things that we don't know and things that are also totally unknowable. The chain of information is also getting weaker as new policies come into place.

That aside, in your own organisation and market, how many times do unexpected 'events' occur that throw your data upside down anyway? A lot from my experience; it's business as usual! We never quite "know", do we? In marketing, this problem is made worse as more and more data becomes available, more information isn't necessarily good if there's no model to process it. By recognising that information is gathered on imperfect models from increasingly imperfect sources, and appreciating that we see "our" reality, not "the" reality, we can choose to widen our view, use better decision making models and make decisions those based on more of what is, rather than what we just think is.

Never use “limited resources” as an excuse for bad marketing. Even when facing perceived limitations, creativity can lead to new possibilities that didn’t previously exist. From only five unique hues, the world has an infinite amount of color potentials. Green wasn’t possible until yellow and blue were combined. Orange is created only when red and yellow are combined. You get the idea.

What colors are you working with? What new ones can you create?

So, when building and executing an effective marketing strategy for your business, you need to start by identifying the resources you do have and the ones you don’t. Do you have an abundance of time, but no money to invest? Do you have a limited amount of marketing knowledge but a sizable budget? The idea here is that even with a scarce amount of resources, you can find combinations that produce good results.

Additionally, this lesson is applicable on a micro level. To produce successful marketing campaigns, your business (or an agency that you employ) should continually run A/B tests. It needs to be a foundational part of your marketing tactics.

Test ad copy for click rates, landing page design for conversions and email subject lines for open rates. This is the only way your marketing campaigns will experience consistent performance improvement. Even when starting with only two different groups, an infinite number of iterations are possible.

When designing a new landing page, typically start with an A/B test of the headline. After enough traffic, review the data to see which headline produced the highest conversion rate. Promote this winning headline as your “A” test and then introduce a new “B” headline to test.

Eventually, you can start testing other elements of the page (sub-headlines, body copy, form, buttons, etc.) until satisfied with its performance.

This process will take months, but after starting with only a couple variations, you have introduced dozens of new possibilities that would have been impossible when you began. To create a new color you have to start by mixing two of the colors you already have.

Successful marketing takes both discipline and execution.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Everyone knows a smart strategy is the key to success, right? Well, why do so many businesses fail? Probably because there was a strategy in place at one point.

A marketing strategy is a high-altitude plan – it’s a long-term vision of your business’s marketing goals. A marketing strategy is similar to the rudder of a ship. Yes, it will steer you in the right direction, but it doesn’t power the boat too. Eventually, the strategy will get you where you want to go, but you’ll probably be at sea a long, long time.

This is why you need tactics too. Tactics are your low-altitude day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. They are the engine of your marketing ship. Tactics power your business towards its marketing goal.

Successful marketing takes both discipline/strategy and execution/tactics.

It’s clear that many great warriors have placed more importance on developing a sound strategy, and there’s not necessarily something wrong with that. Without a well-devised strategy, all of your marketing efforts will be frivolous. You can work as hard as you want, but you’ll never achieve success unless you know what you’re working towards. Without a strategy, you can’t measure progress and performance.

A handful of those warriors probably work tirelessly on execution day in and day out. Some combinations probably could have been successful if given more time. But when you press the restart button on your organization’s strategy every time you face a little adversity, you will never make any progress. Frequently changing strategies suggests that your last one wasn’t very good to begin with.

Successful marketing requires an agile methodology.

“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”

If your first attempt is a big score, an undisciplined solider will likely try to repeat the outcome even though circumstances have changed. In the next end run the location, velocity and rotation are different. The wind has shifted and the temperature has changed. The same uppercut swing used before will likely lead to a weaker one in the next one. The same principle holds true in marketing. Often, early success can thwart the development of a business’s marketing strategy because the positive outcome causes changes in behavior.

Operant conditioning, is a form of learning that causes an individual to change his or her behavior based on perceived rewards or punishments. When certain marketing tactics are successful, the reward of positive reinforcement will increase the frequency at which the original behavior occurs in hopes to achieve the desired outcome again.

However, circumstances have changed and that’s the problem. If you repeat the same marketing tactics over and over again, you will eventually fail. The only constant is change. If you want to sustain a successful marketing strategy, you need to adopt an agile methodology.

There are popular development method used by engineering teams that encourages rapid and flexible response to change. What the agile methodology assumes is that changing circumstances are a certainty and regular adaptation is a necessity. By embracing the chaos, you can be better equipped to respond to it.

How do you make your marketing strategy agile? You start by taking notice of the external factors. What’s developing in your market place or industry? What new marketing platforms or applications are available to you? How are your competitors marketing their businesses? What feedback are you receiving from customers and prospects?

You also need to become a master of your marketing analytics or agency to head this responsibility. Successful decisions are data-driven. You must have the ability to look at the numbers and discern their meaning. What is working and what isn’t? What tactical changes need to be made to continue moving the needle?

For example, ad platforms already use machine learning and artificial intelligence to find people more prone to making the advertiser’s desired action. To achieve this, they analyze the user’s information, like their interests, demographics, and other aspects to learn and detect the best audience for their brand.

A learning AI tool, was created to get much more relevant search results. It interprets the user’s voice searches and, using the power of AI, provides the user with the best results according to what it interpreted from the user’s language and context.

Voice searches require marketers to adapt their content so that it’s closer to the way a user would verbally express themselves. So, in this sense, those famous long-tail keywords will be replaced with more conversational keywords, based on the way the user would say something or do a voice search. A brand that truly knows how to benefit from voice searches will be able to considerably increase their organic traffic.

If you thought a good website couldn’t exist without the help of a programmer and designer… well, that’s a thing of the past.

Today, there are already applications using artificial intelligence to design a website based on user-provided information (like images, text, calls-to-action, etc.. They can make the website look professional in much less time and at an unbeatable price.

Through intelligent algorithms, it’s possible to personalize an experience on a website. After analyzing thousands of data on a single user (including location, demographics, devices, interaction with the site, etc., AI can display offers and content that are more appropriate for each user type.

A good user experience is what keeps an audience browsing a site and, the more time they spend on it, the higher the probability of a conversion.

In this sense, one of the many possibilities that AI offers to make the user experience more user-friendly are chatbots, which we’ll talk about now.

Many brands have started to communicate with their prospects through messenger applications They’re fast since consumers are already using these tools to chat with friends and colleagues and, let’s get real, no one likes to wait for a response on the phone.

Chatbots are making the process of automating responses to potential buyers’ frequently asked questions even easier by providing them with a way to search for the product or service they’re looking for.

A good indicator of a chatbot powered by AI is its ability to answer open questions. These bots use natural learning processing and machine learning to find the correct response.

Chatbots also have many other advantages. They can serve clients 24/7 and retain their data. They’re friendly and never lose their patience. Customers may get angry, but the bot always treats them well. Chatbots can respond to several requests from different customers at the same time, so waiting times will no longer be a problem.

Predictive models can be applied in several areas, and marketing is no exception. These models make it possible to predict the probability of a specific prospect becoming a client. They can also predict other aspects, like the quoted price necessary to make a conversion, or which clients are more prone to making more than one purchase.

The key here is to remember that predictive models will only be as good as the data you provide while creating them. So, if there are mistakes in your data, or there’s a high level of randomness, it won’t be able to make correct or accurate predictions.

This AI application will transform marketers from reactive to proactive planners, thanks to the data that serves as a forward-thinking element or guide to make the correct decisions.

An example of how this discipline is applied in digital marketing is the ranking of prospects or lead scoring. Models generated by machine learning can be trained to rank prospects or leads based on certain criteria that the sales team defines as “qualified purchasers.” This way, the sales team won’t lose any more time on leads that will never convert and can focus on those that will. This, in addition to contributing to increasing sales, means saving considerable time and resources.

As you can see, having artificial intelligence on your side will give you several benefits in your digital marketing strategy. AI is the new face of productivity, efficiency, and profitability since better decisions mean a higher ROI..

The decision to embark on a new era driven by AI, or get stuck in the past, will be everyone’s personal choice.

At the most fundamental level, AI is every innovator’s greatest ally. It can help companies turn market challenges into market opportunities, innovate and explore new channels and initiatives, without sacrificing current successful strategy.

AI reduces the risk of making leaps to new market paradigms by reducing the need to reassign expensive business talent to large initiatives, or simply test new business or product ideas and grow them if they show promise.

It allows for continual and speedy data inputs about customers on how they interact with a brand and what expectations they have. Analysis of, and adjustments to, initiatives can be performed quickly and at scale. That means you can capitalize on success more quickly.

For most businesses, that is a very exciting prospect: flexibility, scale, and control of your budget, so you can effectively manage

1. Laying Plans

Consider mission, climate, ground, command and methods so the commander or marketer can calculate his or her chances of victory before setting out. Consider the factors for achieving strategic marketing over tactical…. In warfare, as in business, there are three key factors that can determine who will be more likely to win. These three factors are: The moral law; the commander or leadership, as well as the method and management. Much is about respect and gaining the trust of your army organisation and of course your customers. Strong virtues and the discipline of each team member's roles and responsibilities, including your own provided leadership and clarity, matters enormously.

2. Planning for the Challenge of attack

Economy of warfare/marketing recognises that success requires winning small decisive engagements quickly. Successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict. "In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns." Defeat your opponent fast, so that you won't become fatigued and you won't lose strength in resources. This means putting forth all your best efforts to defeat your opponents at the right time and on the right areas, so that competitors lose the desire to win. Key source of strength is unity, not size, Five factors that are needed to succeed: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army, and Cities. Ensure good preparation and apply the correct strategy, such as working out when indirect approaches will be more effective and less energy-draining than direct approaches. This means knowing your market and marketing thoroughly, learning about the tactics, competition and allies/influencers that have been around for years, before your time in the game. Look for the strategies that prove most beneficial by using your intelligence and competitive advantage.

3. Positioning

"Know your enemy and know yourself. If you do so, then you will win a hundred out of a hundred battles. Detailed knowledge of your opponent means that you know their brand behaviours, their strengths and their limitations. But in order to not have this same tactic applied to you effectively, you must defend existing positions until a commander/marketer is capable of advancing from those existing positions in safety. Recognise and pursue opportunities without creating opportunities for the enemy. This also means being able to change tactics when it's clear that your usual approach is failing –Commander who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning is extremely vauable.

4. Energy

Use of creativity and timing in building an army's/organisation momentum. In war, this concerns directing the momentum of the army to focus its energies in the most creative and timely manner without burning all of those precious resources. Having the focus and organising resources around the goals. The best organisations are the ones with talent and where those people commit to their strengths throughout the course of the campaign, they are recognised, organised and encouraged by the leaders. An army's opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy in a given area. "Strike the weak and avoid the strong” Again, you need to know your enemy well in order to spot their weak points, and then attack them. Being first to attack puts you in the stronger position because you lead the way according to how you have chosen, imposing your intent, and for your opponent, playing catch-up is much harder.

5. Engaging The Force

Dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander. Manoeuvre with intelligence. You can lead an army of 1000 soldiers as easily as 10 – it is only a matter of signs and communication. Establish a common language between you and your organisation, a strong sense of 'brand purpose' is powerful. Implement good communication and trust in your team. Remember that the base for a cohesive and cooperative team is clear, constant communication and mutual support.

6. Variation in Tactics

Focus on the need for flexibility in an army's responses. Respond to shifting circumstances successfully. Vary your tactics, and you win. There are two attack methods: the direct and the indirect. The direct method may be used openly, they're expected, but indirect methods to secure victory are the unforeseen, the unexpected, they throw the confidence of your competition. Be sure to disguise your intentions as best as possible, to avoid detection when you're about to vary your approach.

7. Moving The Force - the different situations in which an army or organisation finds itself as it moves through new territories, how to respond to these situations, understand the intentions of other organisations. As your army/organisation progresses, remember to sustain all your aims on winning throughout the campaign. Try to understand your opponent's strategy and destroy it, and bear in mind at all times that: "The clever fighter imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him". Watch for the competitors changes in tactics and situation.

8. Situational Positioning

Three general areas of resistance- distance, dangers, and barriers and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. These are the six ways of ground. They are the general's responsibility, and must be examined. In warfare, they are flight, insubordination, deterioration, collapse, chaos, and setback. These six situations are not caused by something from another planet or Ground, but by the general and the situation. Success and Failure in any organisation starts from the top. The leader is responsible for any and all events that occurs in the organisation.

9. Common situations in a campaign, and the specific focus that a commander/marketer will need in order to successfully navigate them. Use the best position and tactics in relation to the environment and to your competition. Threaten your competition's remaining valuable strategies and positioning to prevent them from connecting their weakness with their strengths. Know how to drive your competition into a position where their weaker self is all they have left to rely upon. Where it is clear that your opponent has failed to adequately prepare for the situation, strike fast if they let a door open.

10. Fiery Attack - the use of weapons tactics and techniques and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. Be "fast as the wind" and as "unmovable" as the forest. That means that your attack must be very quick, but your campaign and positioning should remain very consistent. Remember that the army who wins is the one that shares the same spirit throughout all its ranks, keeping true and remaining consistent. You must examine targets for attack, types of environmental attack and the responses to attacks.

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