Instant learning, long-term results
It’s the end of a long training exercise. Your soldiers have been running drills, acting out scenarios and making decisions for days. Every single action has generated a data point, and now your task is to give clear, actionable feedback. With such an enormous number of interactions, how do you accurately assess how well each side – and each individual trainee – executed battle plans, followed protocols and met objectives?
Military training exercises are complex events, often running for several days and involving thousands of soldiers, all continually making decisions related to both mission objectives and the stated training objectives. This generates massive amounts of data for evaluation, but much of it is currently underused.
Saab’s Training Data Insights (TDI) is an integrated, end-to-end solution that turns exercise data into immediate, actionable insights. From sensors to soldier, it bring together all the data in one platform, enabling AI-driven analysis that creates richer, faster and more credible insights. This leads to faster and more effective training, and the development of more successful battle strategies and doctrines.
More data = more insights
Data analysis is already a key part of the advanced live training support provided by Saab through our GAMER system, which collects data on soldiers’ movements and firing events during training. Our exercise control (ExCon) software suite ‘Expert’, collects and analyses this data to provide feedback on factors such as individual firing accuracy and mission success.
However, even these advanced systems have limitations in collating unstructured data, such as order and doctrine documents, or tactical radio communications. AI has the ability to ingest large amounts of training data, rapidly analyse it for patterns and correlations, and then use that acquired knowledge to make predictions relating to new data. This provides instant training feedback that is both informed and highly relevant, ranging from evaluation of individual performances to exercise-wide insights. For the soldier, this means clearer feedback, for the commander it means more confidence in decision-making, and for the trainer it provides invaluable information to further develop and improve training. Additionally, for the exercise leadership, TDI can add value to the learning process through insights on how effective the exercise was relative to the training objectives.
TDI utilises artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly manage and analyse data from a wide range of sources, combining it to provide near-instant feedback and insights. It can interpret and analyse huge amounts of data: not just conventional structured data, but also from unstructured data sources. These sources include – but are not limited to – the following:
- Military doctrine documents
- Battle plans and orders
- Radio communication
- Video data
- Command and control data feeds
- Weather-related data
- Biometrics
- Terrain data
- Simulation data
Deeper insights, deeper understanding
One example of using AI to gain insights is how command and control (C2) data and exercise data can be combined and analysed, comparing it to the exercise battle plan and identifying any deviations. Collating this with further analysis related to weapons fired, troop movements, and unit effectiveness, as well as weather, terrain and biometric data, can give both unit trainers and analysts a real-time overview and a previously unattainable understanding of performance relative to the mission outcome.
The insights can be displayed in a visual representation of the exercise site, with users able to interact with the information, selecting data sets related to specific places or units, and interrogating the data for further analysis: for example, collating information on the distance most soldiers were from the opponent when they were hit.
Bringing clarity to complexity
The insights TDI provides have the potential to help produce more effective units. Identifying issues earlier in the training process, as well as highlighting deficiencies that were previously missed, creates the opportunity for trainers to compare the attributes of different units, benchmark progress over time, and improve their own training techniques. Further applications include enabling the measurement of the weaknesses and strengths of individual units at different echelons, quantifying effectiveness.
The ability to understand how well trainees adhere to doctrines and plans during training exercises aids in evaluating the effectiveness of those doctrines. If, over time, different approaches prove more successful, then updates made to the doctrine can be based on reliable, relevant data. The technology also allows units to be taught to follow the doctrines of opposition forces, therefore creating more realistic battles and ultimately, better training. As TDI evolves further, additional functionality will become available, including the ability to suggest exercise setups based on previous exercises and results, as well as being able to make comparisons between multiple exercises.
TDI transforms data from training simulations into fast, relevant knowledge that can enhance learning, improve decision making and deliver a higher standard of operational readiness. By bringing clarity to complexity, Saab’s Training Data Insights solution ensures that every training exercise delivers relevant, actionable data in real time, dramatically accelerating the after-action review process and enhancing the value of every training event.