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.
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