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I/ITSEC 2022 had a great turnout, it was fantastic to meet so many people, to share the stage with our partners from across the globe, and witness the power of our live CTTP demonstration. As an event it delivered on many things but from our perspective the most exciting was talk of the military metaverse and how it impacted a lot of the conversations. Why is this the most opportune time for these conversations and what part does Hadean have to play?
Multi-Domain Integration
Right now, the training simulation programmes that are in existence (for example CTTP, MCAST, Gladiator) are all domain-specific, with tools, technology and procurement all operating in a fragmented manner. This siloed approach weighs heavily on budgets, impacts the preparedness of personnel and limits operational capabilities.
Thus, programmes must converge together and become interoperable in order to accomplish multi-domain integration. Pulling together resources, data and assets – both legacy and novel – into an interoperable ecosystem will create immensely valuable benefits across several areas including training and education, multi-domain operations, research, force development, capability acquisition and capability support.
This interoperable ecosystem is beginning to be seen as ‘the military metaverse’.
The Military Metaverse
The military metaverse’s prime functionality will be as a nexus or convergence of physical and virtual realities for the purposes of enabling multi-domain synthetic environments that are vivid representations of real world operating conditions for training and development. It will enable accessibility to tools, data and even upgrades for users on a global scale regardless of geographies, and in real time. It will offer a secure, time and cost effective venue for experimentation with novel systems within simulated environments.
So what does all of this mean for the end user? How will a shift to operating within a military metaverse bring advantages that will be tangible and pragmatic?
Training and Education
Military personnel will be provided with superior quality, personalised training and development pathways that can be delivered to the “point of need”. This training will be on-demand and offered in synthetic environments that simulate the true scale and complexity of real world scenarios to create as immersive and realistic an experience as possible. This experiential realism in the training, enabling warfighters to visualise and feel as though they are in a multi-domain battlespace is what will directly impact levels of preparedness. Not only that, force cohesion will be improved as everyone involved in a training exercise can come together at the same time, exactly as they would for a real mission.
Force Development
The speed at which capabilities can be designed and developed will be greatly increased because the barriers to dynamic and collaborative working will be removed. Secure yet efficient data sharing will mean that only those who need to know will receive the right information at the right time. Movement of troops and allocation of resources will be more strategic as it will be based on efficiently and rapidly produced data-driven insights. The speed at which data can be gathered, analysed, processed and turned into relevant information in the military metaverse will have a huge impact on on-going operations as command centres will be able to continuously evaluate parameters and be more responsive to changing situations to make real time and, critically, on-time tactical adjustments.
Virtual Test and Evaluation
Lifelike terrain, climates, systems, weapons and human factors can all be represented for virtual test and evaluation in realistic environments; this reliable data can then be exploited in a cost effective manner to assess capabilities in relation to requirements.
Researchers will be able to access and share data with colleagues and come together for exploratory sessions in uninterrupted synthetic simulated labs or workshops. As they work in collaboration, they will be able to reach insights faster as they can rapidly evaluate limitless scenarios. Utilising the military metaverse to drive efficiency in organisational processes further increases contribution to net zero targets.
Decision Support
The potential for risk can be greatly reduced if you have a means of gathering all of the relevant data and calculating every variable, even within constantly changing scenarios to arm yourself with the most valuable insights. This will be possible within the interoperable ecosystem of the military metaverse. It will enable users to explore unlimited ‘what if’ scenarios while running parallel scenarios to generate faster data outputs. Solid, data-based predictions can be leveraged to reach better decisions.
Real-time rendered digital twins can be interfaced with the physical location or circumstance then augmented with AI to create as lifelike a replication of a scenario as possible so that warfighters can be virtually on the scene and armed with all the information and assets required for advanced decision making.
Wargaming
The exploration of countless scenarios, across all domains, can be made at national, global, strategic, tactical and operational levels. Unlimited courses of action can be quickly assessed to determine the most appropriate options via simulated synthetic environments. Representations of highly detailed scenarios can be reviewed and shared with multiple users in dispersed locations allowing for a more collaborative exercise. The platform will supply composable, high fidelity wargaming capability as, when and wherever it is required.
Hadean’s credibility as a valuable partner to customers across defence is validated as our cloud-native solutions continue to deliver tangible results to end-users. To this effect, we’ll be excited to reveal the next stage in our activities to bring about a fully realised military metaverse not only with our partners in the United Kingdom but further afield too.
These next steps will enable the Armed Forces to take their capabilities to the next level in order to meet and overcome future threats, increasing effectiveness across capability support, capability acquisition, research and operations.