Warfighter Podcast

Strap in. For our penultimate episode of the season we tackle what might seem like a simple question, but proves to be expansive - What does it mean to deliver realism in Training? 

We are joined by Anthony Pittman who, as well having a lengthy service in the British Army where he lived and breathed training, is currently the Director for Development & Optimisation at Babcock.

Always a contentious subject, (which we?re sure is the start of some mess brawls), we don?t hold back from the difficult questions. Anthony deals with each point elegantly, tackling diverse subjects such as:

We knew 40 minutes wouldn?t be enough for this subject, so no doubt we will return to it in the future. Anthony wraps up the discussion with his vision for what improved realism means for the future of collective training.

Excellent food for thought and very topical with all the work going on in this area at the moment.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

We?re coming back to our favourite topic - how do we get innovative ideas off the ground and into the market for exploitation by the frontline. In past episodes we?ve discussed the ?Valley of Death? and the challenge described in the book ?Crossing the Chasm?.

This episode we speak to Owen Thompson, who deals with this every day in his role as CEO at Cambridge Future Tech - a Venture Builder that works with deep-tech startups across diverse markets. Owen has had two successful careers to date: Firstly as a Typhoon pilot for the Royal Air Force and then appointed to senior positions in a leading defence prime when he left the forces.. So he brings a unique perspective for defence centric technologies.

The capital markets for startups have historically been slightly allergic to funding defence startups, but with the realisation that sustainability is closely related to security, attitudes are changing. We see this with investments in companies like Palantir and Anduril which have the potential to create huge change in the Defence industry.

In what becomes a wide ranging discussion, Owen talks about his experience with new technology startups trying to make a difference in Defence, how they met these challenges and potential routes for funding and getting innovation to the users through the commercial maze that government procurement often is.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better...

This week the Warfighter Podcast takes a small tangent - it?s not all running around with a dagger between our teeth. We are pleased to welcome Sae Schatz, who has an extremely diverse career so far, formerly serving as the Director of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, a published author and expert in learning sciences.

Before joining the civil service in 2015, Sae worked as an applied human?systems scientist, with an emphasis on human cognition and learning, instructional technologies, adaptive systems, human performance assessment, and modelling and simulation.

Whilst we?ve discussed platforms previously, this episode it?s all about the learning ecosystem - how we can start to develop it and foster improved collaboration across learning communities.

Sae offers a challenging vision for what might be possible, demonstrating a number of areas which are yet to be fully exploited across the learning community. Not just a theorist, she leaves us with some practical examples of how we start to develop this vision, with a discussion around the common challenges for organisations and how we need to think differently about how individuals learn most effectively.

Plenty of food for thought and some very relevant points for many of our listeners. Thanks for coming on the podcast Sae!

Sae Schatz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saeschatz

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our...

Yet another guest that we?ve been dying to get on since last season. We are pleased to welcome Ethan to the podcast to talk about the work he?s been involved in to understand and model the ?grey zone? in modern warfare. Ethan previously served as an Intel Analyst with the US Navy, and now works for Plexsys Interface Products, supporting the simulation and modelling of complex environments.

Defined as ?activities by a state that are harmful to another state and are sometimes considered to be acts of war, but are not legally acts of war?, this subject proves to be both fascinating and broad ranging.

We start by discussing the challenge of conducting multi-domain training, especially the space components and the exponential nature of the problem, which in turn presents computational and processing challenges.

The discussion turns to the rapidly evolving nature of warfare, with most recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, especially the prevalence of low cost drones and persistent surveillance.

While we don?t come to any firm conclusions, the discussion proves how much we have yet to do, and how quickly we might need to develop training systems in the near future to prepare for these emerging threats.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

On a subject we?ve wanted to cover for a while, we are pleased to welcome Andy Gales, who kindly agreed to come and give us all the details about the British Army?s Tactical Engagement System. Which isn?t a single system at all, but several systems integrated together to deliver critical Instrumented Live training for the British Army.

Andy has lengthy experience with the various flavours of TES, from his time in the British Army, as well with his current company Cubic Defence, which supports key elements of the in-service capability today.

A huge subject, that?s much more complex than it might first appear. But Andy does a great job taking us through the early evolution of the technology, the benefits and limitations of laser based systems, the impact of synthetic wrap and new ideas such as Roundless TES.

In all a fascinating look into an area that seems simple, but is actually wonderfully complex with many opportunities for future innovation in Land Training.

Andy Gales: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-gales-1896b32a/

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Virtual simulation has been around for a while now, and there has been some great leaps and bounds in its fidelity - mainly through the adoption of commercially available technologies that run on standard (albeit high-end) computer hardware.

One person who was there during the early emergence of these technologies was Pete Morrison - previously CEO and now Chief Commercial Officer at Bohemia Interactive Simulations. During his tenure, BISim was one of the few companies to successfully repurpose an off-the-shelf gaming engine for military applications. Today Virtual Battlespace is deployed with most of the NATO and partner nations for training militaries, as well as numerous military and government organisations globally.

Pete provides a short potted history of the development of COTS gaming (making us all feel old) and how the applications have grown up in the defence industry to deliver some critical training applications.

But where from here? Pete goes on to speak about the development of virtual technologies for test & evaluation, as well as the future in a world of AI driven warfare - where AI presents us with dilemmas, how can simulation help us to de-risk this?

Building an experimental future framework using simulation will require the convergence of a number of existing technologies, to support the development of future combat systems.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better...

In the run up to I/ITSEC 2023 we are very grateful for Hadean agreeing to sponsor a special episode in two parts.

Firstly, we are very pleased to introduce Royal O?Brien, Global CTO for Hadean. Royal has a considerable track record with the likes of Amazon, The Linux Foundation and a host of games related companies, including foundational work on the O3DE platform and Open Metaverse Foundation.

Not dodging the hard questions, this interview gave us the chance to ask a burning question - Is the Military Metaverse dead? You might think we?d regret asking this of Royal, but he then took us on a whirlwind tour of all the novel technologies and challenges facing military simulation and training. Including subjects as diverse as managing huge datasets, leveraging generative AI, true interoperability beyond the current standards, and integrating the human in the loop.

This discussion reminds us of the huge challenges the military users and industry have to harness these recent developments, which only seem to be accelerating.

We are also joined by Andy Fawkes and Marty Kauchek from Military Simulation & Training magazine, who provide a look ahead to I/ITSEC and point out the things to watch out for if you?re heading out that way.

Hadean is a UK-based spatial computing company that is modernising the military simulation ecosystem with a new way to understand the operating environment for training, strategy and readiness. Their technology provides the AI-powered spatial compute infrastructure that integrates allies, domains, systems, and technologies to deliver a common operating picture, bridging physical and virtual worlds.

Trusted by the British Army and wider UK Ministry of Defence, the Hadean Platform draws on distributed data and leverages novel AI and Large Language Model (LLM) integrations to synthesise coherent, singular, large-scale and complex simulations that are capable of managing millions of entities and dynamically replicating real-world scenarios.

They enable out-of-the-box simulation and orchestration capabilities that are easy to develop, deploy and integrate with any system; from legacy simulators through to bleeding-edge AI and LLM solutions. The platform is primed with a core distributed pattern of life simulation

As a former Special Forces operator, Gareth Collier has had an impressive career to date, including responsibility for the development of the training and capability development of over 2,300 in the Australian Special Forces Command.

While a successful military career does not automatically translate to being successful in business, Gareth provides a text-book example of how it can be done. Combining skills and experience from his time serving with the commercial realities of doing business with the Australian Defence Force.

Gareth joined SimCentric in late 2015, as their VP of Strategy has been working closely with militaries around the world to take SAF Foresight (a tool for planning and preventing accidents in live firing exercises) from concept to a fully fledged product, ready to be put into service.

For anyone trying to do something similar, his story provides a step-by-step guide of how it can be done. This is not mere business school, case study theory, but the true reality of how ideas and technology should be developed for military and government users.

Gareth breaks down his product development strategy, covering:

A fascinating insight into the inspiration, hard graft and challenges that goes into the development of this product over the past 6 years.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying...

Following on from the trend of finally getting some of the guests we had shortlisted for Season 1, we are very pleased to introduce Ruari Henderson-Begg. Ruari was previously SO1 Synthetics in Air Capability, and was also the Programme Manager for Gladiator - a distributed synthetic training system for Air Combat Training for the Royal Air Force.

Ruari has lived the experience of bringing a challenging programme from its early inception through to full Initial Operating Capability, something not many can say. He therefore offers a number of important insights about the challenges, opportunities and lessons learnt from one the first of type for this scale of synthetic training system.

We cover a lot of ground in a relatively short time with Ruari, discussion Agile vs Waterfall development, how to grow as an Intelligent Customer, the impact of COTS on defence policy and our approach to simulation coherence.

His thesis is that all domains can learn from this experience, through shared lessons learnt, even if the architecture and end use case is different. Experience that Ruari hopes to bring to bear in his future role as Chief Modelling & Simulation Officer for the RAF.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

While Tom has been battling an annual occurrence of ?Flymageddon? on his farm, the team have been busily lining up exciting guests for Season 2. We plan to pick up on many of the themes from Season 1 and start pulling those threads!

This episode is no different, and we are pleased to be joined by Winston Chang from Snowflake who is their CTO for Global Public Sector and so has a special interest in dealing with large data problems across government and defence. Winston is himself a West Point graduate, so brings a perspective from both civil and military angles.

We start by asking Winston how we got here, providing a potted history of the movement from Data Warehouses to deal with ?Big Data?, Data Lakes and Platforms. Of particular note is the move from fixed infrastructure to cloud deployment of data, which fosters improved collaboration and data sharing.

Of course no episode is complete without mention of AI, and Winston goes on to explain how these developments have helped to enable deployment of machine learning and LLMs, which require large amounts of storage and compute resource. Without which the current crop of generative AI applications would not be possible.

While covering many topics in a short session, Winston makes an interesting point about how we should view data like a water ecosystem. We need to learn how to cultivate and curate this resource, and it doesn?t need to always be in a perfect state to gain benefits from it. Like a natural ecosystem, it supports a wide range of sources, users and consumers.

Last but not least, we speak of the challenge to build a common understanding of how we should manage data, as well as build a workforce with the necessary skills and experience to properly exploit it.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are...

Well, we said we?d come back to the topic of AI and do a deeper dive into the subject. Since Generative AI sprung into our collective consciousness earlier this year, the hype hasn?t really died down. So we are pleased to explore the impact of the technology with someone who has direct experience of implementing AI into defence projects - Rob Albritton from OctoLab, which was recently acquired by IBM.

Rob provides an explanation of what generative AI means, and how it differs from other machine learning technologies, and why it matters to defence. He then talks us through his experience in deploying generative AI on defence projects, sharing his views on where it can add value as well as some of the pitfalls.

We wrap up the discussion with some real insights into some of the challenges and risks of deploying this technology - such as the problem of model ?drift? and the challenge of applying it to safety critical applications. 

This episode is a must if you're still confused by a lot of the buzzwords and terms surrounding generative AI.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Today?s the day the Warfighter Podcast get to announce its new Sponsor - Babcock International, who have very kindly agreed to back our exciting schedule for the Season 2.

To kick things off we are joined by Matthew Chuter who?s the Campaign Director for CTTP at Babcock. We start the discussion around the CTTP Programme recently launched in the UK and what it means for transforming Army Training. Matt also reveals the members of Team Crucible and describes what they each add to the training delivery proposition. We look forward to digging into some of these interesting areas during this season.

For the second half we are joined by Jennifer McArdle PhD who is the Senior Director of Defense Programmes at CAE. Jennifer?s reputation precedes her, and she kindly shares with us her quick take on the main challenges for the future of Land Training, particularly in the light of the recent war in Ukraine. We discuss the impact of the Urban Battle and how that?s still a huge challenge, as well as how current training systems need to evolve from their Cold War origins.

A great primer for the new season as we plan to dig into some of these topics in future episodes.

Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.

We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.

Whether it?s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset....

You thought you?d heard the last of The Warfighter Podcast? We?ve been taking a short break - Tom?s been working hard on the farm and Colin has been off sailing (OK, not much sailing but the fish weren?t going to snorkel themselves).

We are now pleased to be able to say that Season 2 is GO, and we have a shiny new sponsor and exciting lineup of guests. We might even try another Live event or two. All will be revealed in the next episode.

Last season we had a couple of guests that we couldn?t fit into the schedule. So we are very pleased to be able to release this interview as a bonus episode. We are joined by Fahad ?Sunny? Masood who provides us with his perspectives on international collaboration by the Armed Forces during his time flying for the Pakistani Air Force. This is the type of work carried out by our Armed Forces, quietly in the background that delivers huge returns in terms of strengthening partner nations and building important links. 

Sunny describes some of the cultural challenges of working with these training teams and reflects on the impact they had on his career and how it shaped his thinking as an aviator.

In another first, the Warfighter Podcast are very pleased to be able to work with NATO Modelling and Simulation Working Group to cover their latest initiative - the MSaaS Jam, hosted at the Tech Grove, Orlando, Florida. For those that don?t know this is the spiritual home for Modelling & Simulation across the US DoD.

Over a weekend in June, teams were invited to a ?hackathon? style event, fed pizzas and Mountain Dew, and asked to develop a novel simulation service that is scalable, agile, and suitable for training or experimentation.

Teams could take part in person, or remotely as either a participant, SME or observer with the chance for teams to win $5,000. The top three teams were invited to present their solutions to the NATO MSaaS Working Group, as well as be featured at I/ITSEC 2023.

This interview was recorded in two parts, featuring Robert Seigfried (Co-Chair NATO Distributed Simulation Training), Chris J McGroarty from US Army DEVCOM and the winning team (AKA The Topography Troopers) from SimBlocks.io and ARA. Jordan Dauble from SimBlocks joins us in the second half to talk about the experience, and what it took to make the winning solution.

A fascinating initiative from NATO NMSG that sought to break down some of the innovation barriers and introduce new approaches and thinking to distributed simulation. We look forward to covering this event in the future!

NATO and nations use simulation environments for various purposes, such as training, capability development, mission rehearsal, and decision support in acquisition processes or in operations..  Consequently, Modelling and Simulation (M&S) has become a critical capability for the Alliance. M&S products are highly valuable resources and it is essential that M&S products, data, and processes are conveniently accessible to a large number of users as often as possible. However, achieving interoperability between simulation systems and ensuring the credibility of results currently requires large efforts with regard to time, personnel, and budget.

Recent developments in cloud computing technology and service-oriented architectures offer opportunities to better utilise M&S capabilities in order to satisfy NATO's critical needs.

M&S as a Service (MSaaS) is a concept that includes service orientation and the provision of M&S applications via the as-a-service model of cloud computing to enable more composable...

Our first foray into the real world, Warfighter Live hosted its first panel discussion at DSET in Bristol and kindly sponsored by VRAI - more about them below. We were joined by a highly experienced guests that brought a diverse range of views to the discussion:

There is currently lots of discussion in the Simulation & Training community about the role of Platforms. But what does this word even mean?

We posed a few questions to our panellists to gain some better perspectives and understanding of this complex topic:

An animated discussion ensued, with lots of good points made by all?plus questions from our live event audience!

In advance of the very first Warfighter Live event at DSET Bristol, we speak to Tess Butler (CEO of Ruddy Nice Ltd), who has been delivering DSET with her team since 2016 - so now in its 8th year.

For those that haven?t heard of DSET it is one of the fastest growing Defence Training & Simulation events in Europe, with attendees from over 41 countries and well over 1,000 attendees registered so far. It is held at the Ashton Gate Stadium in Bristol, and features exhibitors from virtually all the leading organisations across defence.

The conference programme hosts a wide range of workshops, talks and panel discussions debating all of the current issues across Training & Simulation. This year for the first time the Wargaming sessions will be streamed live. Also watch out for the first European Serious Games Showcase with some innovative training applications from military, industry and academia.

It?s not too late to register to attend on the link below, remember that military, government and academia get in free. If you can?t attend in person there are virtual tickets available for free, kindly sponsored by LuxCarta.

Tickets: https://hopin.com/events/dset-2023

DSET Website: https://dset.co.uk/

In our final education episode for this season, we are very pleased to welcome Len Granowetter, CTO for MAK Technologies. For those that don?t know Len, he has been at the forefront of some of the most demanding simulation challenges and applications on large scale projects. Most notably MAK?s software is integral to the UK Gladiator and Australian Army?s Land Sim Core projects (to name but two).

There is a lot of discussion about common or ?single? synthetic environments these days. To understand this better, Len takes us through a short tour of the component parts of a simulation platform, talking about how interoperability is a different challenge from deployment (the infrastructure side). Semantic interoperability is the real challenge now - how to seamlessly integrate terrain for example. 

Finally, Len talks about some of the different approaches taken by real world projects, and the trade off taken between technology innovators and technology integrators. Not often are these the same sorts of organisations.

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

This episode we are very pleased to be joined by Luke Shabro, a former Intelligence Analyst and US Navy veteran, he is now the Deputy Director at Army Futures Command TRADOC and jointly runs the US Army Mad Scientist initiative. 

We don?t mind saying that the US Army Mad Scientist podcast provided quite a bit of inspiration for the Warfighter Podcast - so it was great to hear more from Luke about his experience of driving innovation and change through large organisations.

Luke could speak on many subjects with authority and depth, but we were keen to learn from his experience of in Army Futures Command, and some of the techniques and approaches they used to inspire change across a sprawling organisation. As the title suggests - how do we disrupt without destroying current operations and the good parts.

In this bold future, it?s about making more connections, spreading information, views and perspectives across a mesh rather than a strict hierarchy. Luke points out some of the things that can be blockers as well as the tricks that can work to drive change.

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who is fresh back from ITEC in Rotterdam (one of the largest training and simulation conferences in Europe). Andy provides us with a brief rundown of the main themes and news items of interest from the show floor. We can confirm he was seen for a brief moment cutting across the show floor to deliver his paper!

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Following on from our previous episode with Joe Robinson, we are joined by Jason Kennedy who is the VP of Engineering at Improbable. Jason has an impressive background in, having previously directed large teams of engineers to push the boundaries of simulation technology for defence and space applications.

In a full and frank discussion, Jason describes the challenge for scaling simulation applications for serious training and decision support applications. Coining the term ?Horizontal Scaling?.

Jason covers the demand signal first, laying out the need for improved collaboration between government, academia and industry across simulation technologies. Partly to reduce costs, but more importantly to model and rehearse things that just can?t be done live due to the need for scale, complexity or things that are too dangerous to do in the real world on a live population.

Jason goes on to describe what isn?t working and proposes some approaches for improved collaboration and argues the case that there may be some dominant platforms for our ecosystems (such as we see with Apple and Google) but that?s not necessarily a bad thing if it lifts the rest of the industry and academia to innovate. Like the rail network, some monopolies are just a reality we may have to live with, rather than a fragmented approach to developing our infrastructure.

As ever we are joined by Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who has curated some of the best stories from the last two weeks across training and simulation. One story that doesn?t seem to go away is the problems with UK MFTS. Andy also covers initiatives to lower the environmental impact of flying training and of course next week is ITEC in Rotterdam, which no doubt will provide a whole host of more interesting news to come!

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Continuing our Education series we are very pleased to Welcome Björn Möller who, whilst serving as the President of Pitch Technologies, is also one of the leading authorities in distributed simulation standards. Bjorn has been deeply involved in shaping the HLA simulation standard for the past 30 years.

Bjorn expertly breaks down what can be a complex subject into easily understandable concepts, during this fireside chat. From his lake cabin in Sweden. We hope you?re sitting comfortably.

We cover some of the history behind the development of the HLA standard, and what it sets out to do along with some key terminology. Bjorn then goes on to describe some of the key features for the standard, above what legacy standards such as DIS can achieve. He also covers the use of FOMs across a number of use cases, from pilot training to C2 applications and space.

To end we cover the future developments planned for HLA, which is an ever evolving standard that aims to support ambitious projects across the training and simulation spectrum.

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

We know we talk a lot about innovation on this podcast, but this week we look into an interesting initiative to stimulate and grow ideas across all arms of the UK Armed Forces.

The military relies on harnessing the latest technology in order to gain an advantage of it?s adversaries, however this is often hard won. The pace of technological change is only increasing all the while.

These factors were part of the motivation behind the setting up of the UK Battlelab, and we are grateful for Ed Ebbern joining to tell us more about how it works, and some of the behind the scenes challenges and opportunities.

Ed talks about the concept of ?bottom up? innovation, where those at the coal face (irrespective of rank) are often best placed not only to understand the problem but also to develop and implement novel solutions.

The UK Battlelab is still in its infancy, however represents an incredible opportunity for inter-service and international collaboration with partners across defence, industry and academia.

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes from MST, covering some of the latest stories internationally - from latest DOD investments in training and simulation, to under-the-hood developments from NVIDEA and Epic for game engines and graphics rendering. Of course we couldn?t go another week without mentioning AI!

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Edward Ebben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardebbern/

This episode is a different take to our normal subjects. We are joined by Christina Balis, Global Campaign Director for QinetiQ, who looks at the non-technological aspects to tackling the challenges of Training Transformation.

Christina brings broad experience to this problem, from outside defence as well as within. Christina argues that the challenges in training for a multi-domain battlespace are predominantly NOT a technological challenge. Rather one around the people, processes and institutions.

Christina goes on to cover how we need to think about how we attract and train our people, whilst growing future commanders. We need to train for adaptability, decision making skills and with the Whole Force in mind.

We end the discussion on how we might rethink how we procure these future systems (which are a long way from merely buying military hardware. More importantly how we integrate and evolve the training capability.

As ever we are joined by Andy Fawkes from MS&T, bringing us an update on the latest happenings within modelling and simulation. This week we discuss fully immersive suits, the crossover of technologies from F1 simulation and ongoing developments in international training and collaboration.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

1 March - "As Real As It Gets" - Canada company IFTech - ARAIG: As Real As It Gets Battle Suit - fully immersive gaming suit - Interview by Ian Mccrudden from ETSA

We are joined by the CEO of Conductrr, Robert Pratten, who takes the time to provide us with a masterclass in the development of virtual copies of the internet - or synthetic internet.

While not necessarily a new idea, Robert explains some of the more recent approaches and applications for this type of technology, which is especially relevant to multi-domain operations and the ?grey zone?.

Robert explains typical use cases, the need for a digital twin of the internet, the advantages for such a sand-pit environment, as well as the type of training objectives that can be supported.

In an ever complex threat environment, this type of training can be used to support multi-agency training, allowing operators to rehearse how they might collaborate in real time and respond to emerging threats. The discussion moves to where the technology might lead and how large a synthetic internet might need to be in the future.

VIDEO of Colin being put through his paces on Conductrr's crisis training platform can be found here: https://youtu.be/wrNEthnofm4

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

In a long anticipated episode, we are joined by Joe Robinson who is the CEO of Improbable Defence. 

In a wide ranging discussion, Joe kicks off by tackling the Metaverse question, defining what it means to Defence, and providing his own personal views on how it might be implemented over the coming years. Joe also provides a short update on some internal developments within Improbable as the organisation matures its service delivery offerings.

We also take the time to discuss with Joe some of the more recent topics within defence, including how AI and machine learning might impact defence and how they relate to modelling and simulation.

Recognising that the adoption of new technologies might require a different approach to, Joe goes on to describe how governments are adapting the way they procure, implement and support these emerging concepts. Joe highlights the work done by Defence Digital and other organisations across government that are changing the way they do business.

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who is sticking with the Metaverse theme to update us on developments within the Royal Navy?s bridge simulators. Andy goes on to discuss another story about how VR can be used to identify people by their movement and behaviours only, which is an interesting if slightly scary concept.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

For this episode we are pleased to be joined by Lon Bartel, who offers his insights from the perspective of Law Enforcement training. Lon is the VP of Training & Curriculum at VirTra, based in Arizona. He is a former police officer with over 25 years of experience, qualified as a range and tactical instructor and a published author. He is currently embarking on a PhD in Performance Psychology.

Lon describes some of the systems in use across law enforcement, including the 360 degree system developed by VirTra, as well as the volumetric video technology. He describes how the training requirements differ for police and law enforcement officers, and how that shapes the training systems.

The focus is more on creating pressures through visual and non-visual cues, overloading the sensory systems in order to increase the training challenge. Lon goes on to explain how they aim to get away from ?box ticking? training to make time spent in the box a more rewarding experience, using applied psychology to enhance judgement and decision making for officers. A subject that is very much in the news in North America and the rest of the world.

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who takes us through some of the more recent developments in the training and simulation world. The theme of international collaboration continues, as well as further moves to promote virtual learning and digitisation of the military.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

For this episode we are very lucky to be joined by John Hoggard from the Defence Academy of the UK, in Shrivenham. John is a full time lecturer in Defence Simulation and Modelling, and teaches on a number of courses delivered to civilian and military personnel who go on to work on major simulation projects across industry, defence and the civil service.

We invited John to speak about anything he wants, and his particular passion is real time graphics, which leads on nicely from a previous episode on 3D modelling. John guides us through a range of concepts, including how computers draw the virtual world, polygons and pixels, refresh rates, how graphics cards work and the difference between frame and refresh rates.

John takes us through the latest developments in photo-realistic graphics, as well as the future development path for VR, Ray Tracing, mobile graphic and advanced sampling techniques.

All this might seem a heavy technical subject, but John never fails to bring concepts to life with his enthusiasm and humour. Recording this was an absolute pleasure.

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

This week Colin has been finding all the rust holes on his Landrover chassis, whilst Tom was playing with ChatGPT, and some other AI tools. The results are revealed later in the episode.

This week the format changes slightly as we are joined by two guests from the UK Defence & Security Accelerator (DASA) - Stacey Crump and Tom Adamson. Our guests give us an introduction to the work of the organisation and how they seek to foster innovation and technology that can not only be used to support defence, but also more widely across government and society.

A particular challenge in the field of innovation research and development is taking an initial idea and prototype to adoption by the mass market. This has spawned a number of papers and even a book on the subject. Our guests discuss the approach DASA has taken to try and address the problem, with a number of specific examples and strategies.

DASA is an organisation that funds innovative ideas from any organisation large or small, outside of the UK as well as from within.

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes from MS&T, who takes us through some of the more recent Training & Simulation developments in the news, including

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

International Military Exercises:

Tom has Starlink problems and Colin is wondering if it was wise to install AI to control his garage door. Lots of exciting episodes planned, not least from our sponsor, Improbable.

This week the Warfighter Podcast is joined by Al Roan who is Managing Director of Cervus - a company which delivers data insights for Defence and Security. Al, an ex-Army officer turned data entrepreneur, started on this journey after a poignant event when he was tasked to look into information related to the death of a comrade.

From his experience harnessing data to provide deep insights for the military, Al provides us with an overview of how data analytics is used and breaks down some of the myths and misconceptions. Al covers:

As ever we are joined by our intrepid journalist Andy Fawkes. As things have been a bit quiet over the Christmas break, Andy gives us a look-ahead on the technologies and themes which he thinks will be important in 2023:

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Watch the panel online for free on Thursday 26 January 09:45-16:30 pm (GMT).

This episode, continuing our Education series, Tom and Colin are joined by Ian Ferguson who is a QGI working at the Royal School of Artillery, teaching and advising on simulation and training matters for the British Army. Ian has spent the last 3 years working in the Simulation Wing of the RSA, trialling and experimenting with a range of XR technologies. (We would like to note that the views expressed on this podcast are from Ian?s personal experience, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the UK Ministry of Defence).

Ian provides a helpful overview and clarification, covering:

As ever, this topic is deeper than it initially appears. Ian guides us through a discussion around some of the strengths and weaknesses of the various technologies that are involved in XR systems, with some strategies and approaches for dealing with introducing systems into the training pipeline.

Tom provides a bit more detail on the challenge he?s set within the Synthetic Internet that Colin will face in a forthcoming episode. How?s that for a cliffhanger?

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

Tom is recovering from the usual bout of seasonal flu, but still finds time to reflect on what a fascinating time it is for the M&S world. As this is the penultimate episode for the year it was a chance to look back on what?s gone on as well as think about what might be in store for 2023.

Our guest for this episode is none other than Robert Seigfried who has spent a large part of his career supporting the NATO Modelling and Simulation Group (NMSG). Robert provides us with an overview of what NATO is trying to achieve in terms of pooling and sharing of resources, and then dives into the specific areas of research for the NMSG.

Multi-Domain Operations is an increasingly important concept for modern warfare and therefore it is important that partner nations are able to train for this. Robert goes on to describe the increasing need for synthetic environments to support this training, as well as the ongoing work by NMSG to define standards for UCATT ( live instrumented training) and Distributed Synthetic Training. Robert goes on to discuss the key challenges for MDO and the importance of open standards in supporting this work.

Andy Fawkes gives us a slightly different take on the news, by looking back at the top three themes for 2022. The discussion takes us down a few rabbit holes, but they?re nice rabbit holes that we might visit next year. No doubt many of the themes from this year will develop in 2023 as we see some of these technologies evolve.

Please do get involved, either through our Warfighter Podcast website or LinkedIn pages. We love to hear comments, ideas and suggestions.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Tom & Colin provide an update on their preview of the Improbable Defence Skyral platform, at their HQ in London. Colin has returned from I/ITSEC in Orlando and was able to see the Improbable Defence demo and provides a summary of the main discussion themes from the show. We discuss how there is a greater demand for realism and scale across simulation and training, which is being supported across a number of UK, US and Nato projects in the coming years.

Our guest on this show is Chris Covert, who is an Executive Producer for Microsoft, working on Gaming, Exercising, Modeling, and Simulation projects across a wide range of customers. Chris brings a wealth of experience and subject matter knowledge from his career in developing simulation applications to solve some of our most challenging engineering problems.

We ask Chris to break down AI concepts and explain them to people of below average intelligence (like your hosts). In this engaging discussion, Chris breaks down some of the misconceptions and assumptions around AI, and provides a quick reference overview for the different technologies and techniques that come under the banner of AI. We cover aspects of AI such as Machine Learning, Decision Trees, Deep Learning, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. At the end Chris provides our listeners with some great tips on how to address projects that might be seeking to leverage AI technologies.

As ever, we are joined by Andy Fawkes who provides a digest of the recent modelling & simulation news, with some discussion around the more interesting topics. We?re looking for our audience to get involved and send us stories of interest from the Simulation & Training world that we might not be aware of.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Tom & Colin introduce the first episode of Season 1's education episodes.

This episode is designed to be referred to when you (the listener!) have a need to 'gen up' on 3D modeling. Specifically related to the defence industry.

A careful process that can take several discussions with a new client. Setting expectations; defining deliverables. Most projects succeed or fail in the planning phase, and it happens all the time (e.g., recent M4A1 model).

a. Technical Specifications

b. Fresnel

b. Reference Gathering

The beginning of the ?real work?. There are many different pipelines.

a. Highpoly

b. Low Poly

Conducttr is a hybrid warfare/crisis simulation platform that supports a wide range of realistic command post and field exercises. Its synthetic Internet delivers a realistic virtual information environment ideal for exercising in information operations, media operations, social media, OSINT, cyber, CIMIC, and foreign affairs as well homeland security, counter-terrorism and humanitarian disaster relief.

Conducttr can be used solo or with operational systems (as a ?digital wrap?) during live exercises that can last from an hour to several weeks. Available on cloud, on premises with VMware and deployable on laptop as needed.

Tom & Colin discuss the forthcoming demo of the new Improbable platform that is scheduled for an early demonstration this week. Also some comments about the international breadth of listeners and guests scheduled for later episodes - please keep the suggestions coming.

Our guest on this show is Steen Bisgaard who heads up an Australian startup developing robotic targets for training, as well as decoys and robots for use in offensive actions in the real battlefield. Steen discusses the latest developments in this field and where he thinks robots will be used in the future, either as part of the training workup or as part of a hybrid fighting force. 

This area is one to watch and we will no doubt come back to this subject in the future.

As ever, we are joined by Andy Fawkes who provides a digest of the recent modelling & simulation news, with some discussion around the more interesting topics.

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Andy Fawkes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyfawkes/

eVTOL:

For our first episode, the Warfighter Podcast was honoured to host a real live, all-American Warfighter - Col Arnel David, US Army.

Arnel speaks about what it means to be a Warfighter, and the importance of exercising the decision making process for leaders and how this can be enabled through wargaming techniques.

Through the Fight Club initiative that Arnel is heavily involved in, he aims to increase understanding of Wargaming amongst commanders and how these techniques can be integrated within existing training structures and pipelines.

Our hosts also welcome Andy Fawkes for the first time, who provides a digest of the recent modelling & simulation news, with some discussion around the more interesting trends.

Col Arnel David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnel-david/

Improbable Defence is a mission focused technology company working to transform the national security of our nations and their allies in the face of increasing global competition and evolving threats.

Today, national security is defined by technological superiority. We believe that software more than any other capability will redefine how war is fought and who will be on the winning side. Those entrusted with the preservation of our freedom, prosperity and safety deserve the best software-defined capabilities available.

Since the end of the Cold War, the UK, US and their allies have been unchallenged in military technological dominance. Today, we are facing a different reality: our adversaries are seizing the technological edge.

Improbable Defence chooses to stand up and not stand by. We are building cutting-edge software products to help our nations retake the technological advantage. We believe in defending our democratic values against those who seek to undermine them. Supporting those tasked with this mission is at the heart of all we do. We seek to radically transform the mission outcomes of those whose responsibility it is to keep us safe.

Andy Fawkes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyfawkes/

VirTra volumetric video capture studio:

Ex-RAF pilots and then the latest news last week from the BBC:

Tom and Colin introduce their new Simulation & Training Podcast, discuss the motivation behind it and provide a glimpse of the subjects and people that will be covered.

The Warfighter Podcast is partnering with Military Simulation & Training (a respected industry publication) and will feature a regular slot with their Special Correspondent Andy Fawkes.

A monthly education feature will be a cornerstone of the show, which aims to demystify common concepts and terms across defence modelling and simulation, with bite-size, simple explanations.

An exciting schedule has been planned for the next few months, with no shortage of subjects in what looks to be an exciting time for the adoption of emerging technologies across the Simulation & Training space.