Hadean in Kenya: Deploying a cloud-native simulation for live British Army exercises in Africa (Part 1)

Beside the spender of Mount Kenya and amidst abundant wildlife the British Army is exploiting Web 3.0 technology to stream and visualise live training outcomes from a remote operating environment in Kenya to military leaders in Army HQ in the UK.

31 March 2023
Nick Brown

Facilitated by our partners at the British Army Collective Training Transformation Programme (CTTP) it was great to bring out our team of experts, tech lead Pete Taylor and fellow Infantry vet Will Pomroy, who are working in lockstep with end-users to optimise their experience and ensure the delivery of the project.

Hadean team: Peter Taylor, Will Pomroy and Nick Brown.

Our Concept Demo for the British Army was first showcased at the I/ITSEC 2022 Innovation Showcase where we demonstrated the cloud simulation’s ability to visualise a synthetic environment of increased scale, complexity and fidelity, based on recorded data from Tactical Engagement Simulation (TES) devices worn on body armour of troops during Exercise Wessex Storm. Powered by Hadean’s metaverse technology, the simulation blended different 2D, 3D and Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) components of land training systems into a single immersive simulation that can accommodate remote physical and virtual users in larger scenarios, without sacrificing realism and accuracy.

Deployed in the African wilderness, the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) is evaluating our cloud simulation’s ability to operate in an isolated and challenging environment with limited infrastructure and connectivity. The new iteration of our demo focuses on generating 3D elements in Defence Virtual Simulation (DVS – delivered by BISim’s VBS4) and streaming outcomes in real-time, for the first time. Hence, this deployment is also aiming to assess how effectively the system can provide useful information to users at all levels of command by integrating various systems to facilitate quick training validation, as well as data reuse and review. It was pleasing to see how successful and well-received our demonstration back to Army HQ was, a clear validation of the cloud-distributed platform approach. 

Deploying Hadean tech onsite

Furthermore it was a promising sign for the delivery of FCTS in the future that commercial organisations like Ravenswood (supported by QinetiQ), Cubic, 4C Strategies, and Rowden are able to collaborate to ensure a first-class training system is delivered to the troops on the ground and the BATUK staff. 

As global strategic tensions escalate, it’s rewarding to see the significant progress achieved in a programme that is helping push the argument for wider adoption of cloud-native solutions in the Armed Forces. Hadean’s work with our partners at CTTP highlights the importance of striving for innovation that will enable collective training, as outlined by Op MOBILISE, which zeroes in on boosting readiness of British troops, re-thinking how the Army trains and fights and accelerating the modernisation of the service in line with Future Soldier. This can only be achieved when operators from various military domains are enabled to join a single, persistent, scalable, interconnected and secure synthetic training environment that can help boost preparedness, powered by military metaverse technology.

Don’t miss Part 2 of our series which will share learnings and outcomes from the live exercise as well as our thoughts on the future of military training.

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