The Defense Department wants to make greater use of computer simulation tools in preparing military medics for the horrific injuries they will face in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Roger Smith, chief technology officer at the Army's program executive office for simulation, training and instrumentation.

While the military already uses computer simulations in many areas of traditional combat training, the development of such capabilities for practicing battlefield medicine has been largely neglected, Smith told Inside the Pentagon Sept. 15.

The Army office, based in Orlando, FL, is in charge of developing and maintaining the service's training, simulation and wargaming systems.

Researchers there are now working to create a virtual environment, not unlike a computer game, in which “every kind of wound you can imagine” can be displayed on a computer screen so military medical personnel can learn how to treat them, according to Smith.

What makes that sort of computer-based training so attractive is a high level of graphic realism currently absent in live training, where exercise participants sometimes carry pieces of paper denoting their ailment, he said.

“In the game, we can step up the realism, for example, by showing the insides of a soldier with a really bad gut wound,” Smith said. “It's kind of gross, but that's the point. We don't want to find [the trainees] shocked and frozen up when they see real soldiers on the battlefield for the first time.”

In recent years, the military increasingly has turned to computer games, often networked into huge multiplayer events, as training tools. Together with the computer hardware industry, commercial game developers are producing a steady supply of new technologies for modeling realistic three-dimensional worlds or creating intelligent virtual foes.

For the Pentagon, having a vibrant commercial gaming market to tap into means significant cost savings, according to Smith. By freeing up research and development funds, the military can consider disciplines outside traditional combat for training using computer games, he added.

Battlefield logistics operations is another area that could benefit from further computerized training, Smith said.

As for current challenges in the Middle East, computer training systems have to become more sophisticated in depicting the type of non-traditional warfare waged by the insurgents in Iraq, he said. Suicide bombers routinely blend into Iraqi crowds, and identifying enemies before they can attack is difficult.

The military and game developers must now examine what signs soldiers should look for when scouring friendly crowds for possible assailants. “We have to be able to extract that from the real soldiers who've done it before we can put that into a simulation,” Smith said.

Some game-like applications are used routinely in preparing units in the continental United States for their tours in Iraq, Smith said. In one such training tool, for example, soldiers from a unit leaving the Middle Eastern country can give their successors a realistic 3-D tour of their area of responsibility over the Internet.

“Here's the street we usually work on, here's where our checkpoint is,” Smith said, describing some of the information Iraq-bound troops can inspect in the virtual world. In addition, troops could review typical traffic patterns, car models used by insurgents to deliver improvised explosive devices, or popular insurgent sniper hangouts, he added.

The biggest technological challenge for military training games now, according to Smith, is creating virtual enemies that can help train soldiers in fighting an asymmetric war -- Pentagon jargon for the type of insurgency troops are battling in Iraq.

“Developing the artificial intelligence so [virtual enemies] know how to act like a person from a specific culture . . . with goals that are completely different from traditional combat is a really hard thing,” he told ITP.

With training in computerized 3-D worlds on the rise throughout the military, some things can't be practiced on the screen alone, Smith said.

“You can play Call of Duty or America's Army all day long, but you'll never get a sense for how heavy that pack is you have to carry, how dehydrated you get operating in this environment, or what it feels like when a round jams in your gun,” he said, referring to two popular games. “You have to do that in a live environment.”

While the Pentagon and the computer game industry have successfully partnered in the past, such cooperation needs to be improved and formalized, according to Ben Sawyer, founder of the annual “Serious Games Summit.”

The conference brings together warfighters, educators and game developers. Its next gathering is scheduled for late October in Washington.

“Gaming is indicative of how the military still needs to think about how it sources from small innovators,” he told ITP Sept. 18.

Many of the companies in the gaming industry sport no more than 20 staff, he explained. “I think the military is still learning how to be a customer of games, and that includes articulating to the industry . . . how best to work together,” he added.

For now, the cooperation between game developers and the military is “the classic case of two people wanting to get together, stumbling around in the dark, and every once in a while somebody turns the light on and it makes sense,” Sawyer said. “Government managers need to spend more time learning about games.”