Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 71

TRAINING BRAIN REPOSITORY message remains the same, allowing trainers to create a much more realistic and robust exercise event. Feedback from Users in the Field The TBR-EDT became operational on Nonsecure and SECRET Internet Protocol Router Networks in November 2013, enabling Army units to test it and provide feedback. The TBOC demonstrated the TBR-EDT at training and leader development venues, including the Brigade PreCommand Course and Functional Area 57 Course, the Maneuver Center of Excellence, and Army National Guard training sites. A comment by one Army user is representative of the feedback TBOC has received on the value of the TBR-EDT: “I just spent a month and a half developing a TSP [training support package]; with the use of the TBR, I was able to create a similar TSP with the same level of fidelity in an afternoon.”13 One modeling and simulations (FA57) officer recently commented that he believed using the TBREDT would improve the development of TSPs at the brigade, division, and corps levels. He said it would make FA57 officers into “rock stars when they get to their first operational assignments.”14 Moreover, senior Army and joint officers are responding very positively, with many saying they wished this type of tool had been available for past training.15 The TBOC completed its Army certification of the TBR-EDT in August 2014. The tool is awaiting final Army accreditation with approval of authority to operate. Conclusion While the TBR-EDT cannot do all the staff work required to create a home-station training exercise, it will provide an effective start-of-exercise solution. Units still must conduct the military decisionmaking process and create their own unit orders for an exercise. The tool will provide a WTSP that contains tactical, control, and setup materials, as well as evaluation plans and references for exercises. This means exercise planners will easily realize significant resource savings while designing exercises. Units can expect to complete a WTSP in days rather than months, enabling them to concentrate on training more than on training development. The TBR-EDT’s end product is a joint or Army exercise across all levels, developed within a complex, realistic, integrated, and challenging training environment that will drive operations, stimulate staff battle drills, and help meet commanders’ training objectives in less time and at a significantly lower cost. If units invest the time to use this valuable capability, it will greatly assist the Army in its effort to revitalize home-station training and build a campaign-quality Army with joint and expeditionary capabilities. Finally, the TBR-EDT is but one of a number of complementary capabilities available from the TBOC. As an element of the TRADOC G-2 and the Operational Environment Enterprise, the TBOC accesses real-world data, information, and knowledge and shapes them for focused application in training, education, and leader development venues. The TBOC supports realistic and relevant home-station and institutional training by providing depth and complexity to scenario and exercise development. It develops operational environment visualizations and gaming products consistent with the Army learning model and responsive to unit needs.16 Col. David Paschal, U.S. Army, Retired, is the director of the Training Brain Operations Center in Newport News, Va. He is a retired infantryman with numerous command assignments and operational deployments, including command of the Warrior Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, for a 14-month tour in Kirkuk, Iraq; and the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, during a deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Maj. Alan Gunnerson, U.S. Army, Retired, is a senior consultant with CGI Federal Corporation, supporting the Training Brain Operations Center as the Data Transformation Laboratory enterprise management supervisor. MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015 69