US Army Europe

Requirements for US Army Europe (USAREUR) to train with coalition partner nations pushed the capabilities of the Joint Multinational Readiness Center – Instrumentation Systems (JMRC-IS) to cover exercises that involve simultaneous training of units over great distances. The JMRC-IS had the challenge to cover the increasing number of training sites to be instrumented for a single exercise. Integrating the capability of existing instrumentation systems such as Ravenswood’s FlexTrain system would extend the training area with little degradation in the quality of training.

Prior to supporting OCONUS exercises, Ravenswood needed to provide proof of concept of sending DIS packets and Indirect Fire (IDF) adjudication remotely. Capabilities created by this integration included tracking of instrumented players, ability to observe live training engagements remotely, executing simulated indirect fire missions in all areas of the exercise, and observing remote After-Action Reviews (AARs). 

The test assumed the FlexTrain system would be used in a “hub and spoke” where all spokes sites would interact with the JMRC-IS at the Hohenfels Training Area (HTA), Hohenfels, Germany. A dedicated datalink was established between Ravenswood’s Product and Services Operation Center (PSOC) in Fremont, CA and HTA.

The test results showed that FlexTrain met the requirements to extend tracking for future large-scale JMRC exercises. Ravenswood live players tracked smoothly in the JMRC-IS with the correct MIL 2525 symbol displayed. Engagements exchanged with Ravenswood players produced the correct data to create pairing lines and showed the state change of live players (e.g. healthy, killed). Ravenswood’s AAR video was successfully distributed to HTA and was judged to be good quality. Finally, the FlexTrain system was capable of handling constructive entities from systems like JCATS for a constructive wrap around.