ENABLING LARGE-SCALE CONTEXT IN LOW-ECHELON TRAINING WITH AIR TASKING ORDER GENERATION

Abstract

In training, context from exercise documents enhances realism. Documents created in real-world operations must be manufactured for training exercises, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process, producing documents not usable by Marine Corps simulations. The Marine Corps is producing the Live, Virtual, Constructive-Training Environment (LVC-TE), allowing separated units to integrate with simulated exercises. LVC-TE includes exercise design tools; however, none addresses exercise document production. This thesis focuses on the production of Air Tasking Orders (ATO) for command and control (C2) exercises conducted by the Direct Air Support Center (DASC) using the FLAMES Automated Simulation Trainer (FAST). Real-world ATOs are inaccessible by DASC units for exercises, meaning ATOs must be pulled from archives or created by hand. Archived ATOs include outdated aircraft and munitions, while hand-typed ATOs are extremely error prone. FAST offers an option to upload an ATO with the intent that the system will populate an aviation scenario if the file is correct. This thesis shows that a tool can be designed and implemented to facilitate creation of ATO files for any air C2 exercise that can be correctly ingested by FAST for expedited scenario production. Through this proof of concept, a preliminary investigation was conducted into scaling this capability to simplify exercise document creation for all warfighting functions and integration with LVC-TE’s suite of exercise design tools.