ORLANDO, Fla. – The U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) showed off some of the latest Army simulation technology during the 2022 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 28 – Dec. 2.
Sponsored by the National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), I/ITSEC is the world’s largest modeling, simulation and training event. The annual event consists of peer-reviewed paper presentations, tutorials, professional workshops, a commercial exhibit hall, a serious games competition and STEM events for teachers and secondary students.
This year, PEO STRI sponsored three separate booths featuring the Reconfigurable Collective Virtual Trainer – Ground (RVCT-G) for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Trackless Moving Targets (TMT), Squad immersive Virtual Trainer (SiVT), Improved – Stinger Team Proficiency Trainer II (I-STPT II), Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE), One World Terrain (OWT) and the International Programs Office.
Nearly all of the PEO STRI displays focused on the Army’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE), highlighting both the software and interfaces that comprise the training technology. Subject matter experts on hand also spoke to how putting the STE at the point of need helps to save valuable training dollars previously spent on travel expenses and per diem for Soldiers.
Also showcased during I/ITSEC, STE – Live Training System (STE LTS) will converge both live and synthetic training to enable interoperability with joint and coalition partners. It will also provide units the repetitions necessary to accelerate and sustain Soldier skills and unit collective training readiness.
Hundreds of conference attendees visited the PEO STRI booths to learn more about synthetic training and emerging technology in national defense. The theme of this year’s event revolved around accelerating training, and programs like the RVCT-G, SiVT, I-STPT II, PCTE, and OWT showed just how fast synthetic training is making its way into the hands of U.S. Army Soldiers.
According to Karen D. H. Saunders, SES, PEO STRI’s program executive officer, the entire PEO STRI portfolio is a strategic effort to help build the Army of 2030. Both the Army and PEO STRI are developing newer and more-advanced equipment and are incorporating cutting-edge technologies to win on the battlefields of the future.
“Our world is changing, and the Army and PEO STRI are changing with it,” Saunders said. “We are adapting to rapid changes in technology and adversary capabilities, including by converging effects across air, land, sea, space and cyberspace to deliver overmatch.”
PEO STRI’s role in building the Army of 2030 is to create a more sustainable, ready and modernized Army through individual and collective training capability across combat platform teams, mission command staffs, and cyber and intelligence communities.
“The nation depends on the U.S. Army to respond to a broad range of missions at home and abroad,” Saunders said. “PEO STRI is rapidly fielding equipment and technology that will help our Soldiers be victorious on the battlefield and return home safely.”
Saunders said she recognizes the uniqueness of having so many stakeholders in a single location like I/ITSEC, and the technologies available at the event directly influence test and training environments and solutions.
“Events like I/ITSEC also allow us to listen to industry and assess the latest technologies in cloud, architectures, data management, gaming industry advancements, terrain generation and models,” Saunders said. “They also help us to encourage a modular open systems approach to enable a diverse solution set and plug-n-play capability.”
According to the NTSA, more than 17,000 people took part in this year’s event, including nearly 2,000 international visitors from 61 countries. Plans are already well underway for next year’s event, and the U.S. Army will serve as the lead military service for I/ITSEC in 2023.
“The U.S. Army is and will always be a leader in modeling and simulation, and we look forward to serving as the lead service for next year,” Saunders said. “We have selected ‘Sustaining a Global Force in a Digital World’ as our theme for I/ITSEC ’23.”
U.S. Army Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI), headquartered in Orlando, Florida, leads a skilled and diverse workforce and works with high-caliber Army partners to enhance operational readiness and support the Army’s modernization efforts by fielding and sustaining the next generation of multi-domain operations testing, training and information operations capabilities.