The capability — dubbed “Swarm” — is in nascent development, but envisioned as a multi-classification digital environment where guardians from various units can come together against simulated adversaries. According to Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba, head of the service’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), early versions of Swarm were built for the Space Force’s primary mission planning and operational support exercise series known as Space Flag.

“The Space Flag that we just completed here about a month and a half ago, many of the threats that we faced were simulated in that environment,” Sejba said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “You had crews from across the Space Force that were actually executing over a two-week period to understand how they would actually perform in the environment.”

Sejba noted that the environment is currently only available to STARCOM on-prem, and that the service is focused on delivering the “initial aspect of Swarm” by the end of 2025. At the same time, the Space Force is planning to move the capability to the cloud sometime in the next two years so it can scale the size and scope of its future training and test exercises, he added.

“We’re quickly building not only the red threats that we need to represent, but also all of the blue systems that are coming online over the next several years,” Sejba said. “Then we’re quickly moving it to the cloud so we can get to a distributed training capability that allows each of those guardian units to actually be able to [train] from their home stations, but do it over and over.”

That means guardians from multiple units in different locations can simultaneously train in the simulated environment and prepare for more complex threats, such as fighting against multiple adversaries at once, he noted. 

Swarm is part of the Space Force’s broader effort to modernize and build out its training infrastructure — a task that is both one of Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman’s top priorities and a significant challenge for the Pentagon’s newest service. The service’s flagship development program is the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI), which seeks to combine digital, cyber and live-training ranges under one system.

Developing OTTI from scratch, however, has been a challenge. Sejba highlighted that while the other services have had decades to build their test and training infrastructures, the Space Force has only had a few years to do so.

STARCOM also recently divided the OTTI effort into two distinct paths, Sejba noted. One tackles the need for a distributed training capability that is being built out by Swarm, while the other focuses on developing a high-fidelity, realistic simulation environment — a system akin to the Air Force and Navy’s Joint Simulation Environment (JSE), which is used to train pilots for complex combat scenarios.

“Something like JSE is something that we will eventually need. I would argue we probably need it sooner rather than later so that we’ve got our own capability to do some of this high-end testing [and] training,” Sejba said. “When I explore something like JSE, in that kind of environment you can very quickly translate that to what that might look like for space and the kind of high-end training that you’d be able to do for guardians in the near future.”

Sejba acknowledged that a limited budget likely means it will be several years before STARCOM has a true JSE-like training environment, but the Space Force is in the meantime leveraging prior work done by the Air Force and Navy to develop the system.

“We know what it’s going to take to be able to adopt that environment,” he said. “We’ve done plenty of research to see if that’s the right environment for us to go forward with, and we certainly know what some of the other services need also from a space effects standpoint.”

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The Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer (RVCT) is a mobile, transportable system that consolidates aviation platforms, ground vehicles and dismounted infantry into a single virtual  environment with the goal to train soldiers on combined arms air-ground missions. The Army plans to field the first platforms across three sites in fiscal 2024: Fort Cavazos, Texas, Fort Novosel, Alabama and Fort Moore, Georgia, according to Col. Nick Kioutas, project manager for the service’s Synthetic Training Environment (STE) portfolio.

“What we’ve been able to do with air-ground collective training capability has really expanded what soldiers can learn and kind of get better at,” Kioutas said Monday during a technology demonstration of the platform at the Pentagon. “It’s about how many iterations we can give to the soldier. With the collective training capability and disparate locations, units can join from Fort Cavazos and Fort Campbell and play together.”

The RVCT is part of the Army’s larger STE portfolio, which is working to modernize the service’s training by bringing together live, virtual and constructive elements. It’s a capability born out of a growing need to conduct multi-domain operations in the service, Kioutas noted.

Each RVCT has individual stations where soldiers can practice operating a platform in a virtual environment before stepping into a live range. For example, an RVCT-Ground system configured to train an M1 Abrams crew would have four stations — a driver, gunner, tank commander and munitions loader — while an RVCT-Air system configured to train future UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilots features two pilot stations and other crew stations.

Maj. Lane Berg, materiel developer for the Army’s PEO Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (STRI), said that the “true power” of the system is the ability to simultaneously train air, ground and dismounted soldiers in a virtual environment

“It’s the tank being able to talk to the aircraft over there,” Berg said during the demonstration. “If we had a Bradley set up, we’d have [dismounted] soldier laptops that are behind the Bradley. So, a squad can get in the vehicle, conduct the mission with the vehicle in movement, … dismount the vehicle, get on a helicopter, go on an air assault [and] come back.”

During soldier touch points, which act as immersive testing and feedback events for new capabilities, the ability to conduct multi-domain training has been very well received, said Maj. Thane Keller, capability developer for the Synthetic Training Environment Cross-Functional Team.

“The ability to set up and to communicate with air as we’re executing a mission has been extremely positive,” Keller said. “It’s just something that we don’t really have the opportunity to train on.” 

The systems can be reconfigured to train on other Army platforms in less than a day, Berg added. RVCT-Ground has Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicle kits, and RVCT-Air can be turned into a CH-47 Chinook or an AH-64 Apache aircraft.

The team also recently tested training on unmanned aerial systems with the platform — a significant time and cost-saving capability, said Maj. Brandon Dotson, assistant project manager at PEO STRI.

“Typically we only operate with them overseas, because you have to shut down the block of airspace to train with them because there’s no other way to do that virtually,” Dotson said. “To be able to do that in a virtual world and do it multiple times on the terrain that you’re actually intending to operate on is a huge game-changer.”

However, Keller said that soldiers have given feedback regarding instability in the system’s software — the Training Management Tool and Training Simulation Software. Currently a prototype being developed by Cole Engineering Services, the software is being continuously updated and improved, he said.

Berg added that nailing down the system’s software will be key to fielding RVCT by the end of 2024. The plan is to start new system test cycles to improve software stability.

The Army is also looking to industry as it improves the technology, Kioutas said.

“On the software side, we have a modular open system architecture. We have a platform development kit that we have given out to whoever qualifies and then asks for it,” he said. “What we’re asking industry to do is go in and look at our platform development kit and identify where we can improve this capability.”

Moving forward, PEO STRI plans to keep adding new platform variants to each of the RVCT systems, such as the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) for the ground system and the aircraft under its future vertical lift portfolios.

The Army also hopes to one day incorporate artificial intelligence and automation tools into the RVCT. Right now, training scenarios are set up manually via the Training Management Tool and opposition forces are run by users on laptops, but in the future automation could play that role instead in order to take some load off of operators, Keller said.

Kioutas said the PEO has a vision for creative ways it could use all the data sources available to it to customize training. For example, an individual soldier’s physical fitness test could play into their future training exercises or an entire unit’s progress would become a factor. 

“All the training data that we collect, we don’t currently save that,” Kioutas said. “What we want to do is to be able to save that and do data analytics on [that] data, as well as develop AI tools and that kind of thing down the road. But that’s not here today, but it’s coming soon.”

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Although much of the service’s efforts have been focused on simulations that better suit digital warfighting operations in the space domain, the mission still demands that guardians be trained in live scenarios, such as how to operate spacecraft and work ground control systems, said Maj. Gen. Shawn Bratton, commander of Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM).

“I think a big change — certainly from when I came up, but even more in recent years — is we’re shifting back a little bit more into live training,” Bratton said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. 

He noted that training for live space ops in the past has been primarily done in a classroom setting where warfighters would discuss missions and potential outcomes, with just some simulation training available.

“Now the discussion is, ‘Why aren’t we flying a spacecraft in training? Why aren’t we getting some sort of reps and sets … in the training environment?’” he said. “If we can move that back into the training pipeline, I think there will be value added.”

Adding those physical training elements within STARCOM’s purview will alleviate some training responsibilities for Space Operations Command (SPoC), he noted.

Since its creation in 2019, the Space Force has been on a campaign to build tools and infrastructure that will help guardians hone their digital warfighting skills in the space and cyber domains. Much of those efforts are directed at high-fidelity simulators that virtually connect guardians to a simulated space environment.

While digital skills are key for the Space Force, guardians should also be able to receive training on the physical aspects of the space domain, Bratton said. He pointed to programs at the Air Force Academy that give students experience in building and flying spacecraft as an example.

“They’re on crew, they understand ground systems, how to schedule the antenna pass times — all of these sort of fundamental concepts that apply, regardless of what spacecraft you end up flying in your career. We think we can bring that back into training through simulation, but also with some live activity,” he said.

STARCOM plans to build out a National Space Test and Training Complex (NSTTC) that will act as “the gym to go work out the force,” and it has already hosted the first of the service’s Skies exercises, Bratton said. The complex will have scalable training capabilities for both synthetic and live environments that support the service’s mission areas: electronic warfare, orbital warfare, cyber operations and digital connectivity. 

“The NSTTC is the broad label that we put on the range that we’re building, but it’s not a physical piece of real estate that we own,” Bratton explained. “It’s those on-orbit capabilities, the ground sensors and then the infrastructure that ties it all together for command and control and gathering data.”

As STARCOM continues to scale the training complex, it’s looking for industry’s help in ensuring its four mission areas are integrated and able to be trained on together, Bratton said. 

“How do I bring capabilities together and then let it unfold in a live-virtual-constructive way? And so, we haven’t quite cracked the code on that completely,” he said. “We have some simulation capability, [but] I think that’s an area where we need more help. We have some underlying infrastructure and we have a vision of where we want to go … but it’s an area where we’re going to need industry’s help.”

Also to help with integration, the Space Force is on the cusp of publishing a new vision and roadmap that will outline how the service will bring together how it trains its space, cyber and intelligence teams, Bratton said. Right now those three groups of operators are trained separately, but that isn’t how real-world missions would be carried out, he noted.

“Right now we tend to train them in individual groups — especially space, cyber and intel. We don’t operate that way though. Usually there’s representative space, cyber and intel on the crew force,” Bratton said. “And so again, I’ve shifted training burden inadvertently to SPoC. I think STARCOM needs to do a better job.”

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“I taught a class this morning and there were students across the gambit of ships,” Lt. Daniel Vossler told DefenseScoop during a recent visit to Naval Base San Diego.

In conversations during and after a technology-focused tour around that sprawling U.S. military facility, Vossler and Capt. Leonardo Giovannelli briefed DefenseScoop on the early progress and potential of the service’s Mariner Skills Training Center, Pacific.

Giovannelli serves as the first-ever commanding officer of MSTCPAC (pronounced “mystic-pack”).

The advanced training center’s roots trace back to the investigations conducted in the wake of the separate, fatal collisions involving the USS McCain and USS Fitzgerald destroyers. In June 2017, the Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship off the coast of Japan. Months later in August 2017, the McCain and a Liberia-flagged oil and chemical tanker collided near Singapore. 

In total, 17 U.S. sailors were killed between those two crashes, which experts determined were both avoidable in the follow-up oversight review. Photographs of those 17 sailors hang on a wall near the entrance of one of the new simulation facilities in San Diego as a reminder of their sacrifice.

At the direction of the Surface Force Comprehensive Review carried out in the collisions’ aftermath, the Surface Warfare Schools Command had to set up comprehensive mariner skills training centers that could strengthen education and development activities — and ultimately correct and improve on deficiencies cited in the follow-up investigations of the 2017 incidents.

MSTCPAC in San Diego — and Mariner Skills Training Center, Atlantic (MSTCLANT) at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia — were formally established on Oct. 1, 2020.

At MSTCPAC, they’re still in the very early stages of fully realizing this data-driven new training environment. But “now mistakes that folks have made or difficult situations that people have been in, we can recreate those and then give people the opportunity to step in and see what occurred,” Giovannelli explained.

“I can either put it in there where I simply play it, and the individuals can sit there and watch the actual incident unfold. Or, we can put them in and they can actually drive the ship and see if they would do something differently,” he said.

Learning from past mishaps

In his nearly 23 years of Navy service, Giovannelli has commanded multiple ships, conducted counter-drug operations in South America and also deployed to Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe. 

“After I finished that work, I came here and we stood up the Mariners Skills Training Center. So I’m the first commanding officer. We call those ‘plank owners’ — whoever is part of the first group to kind of run a command,” he said. 

Some simulation capabilities are still under construction. But during the tour of the base, DefenseScoop was able to observe and engage with some of the technology setups that are designed or being built to parallel the look and feel of Naval operations that play out on actual ships, and also apply actual data from military sources to inform the different types of training offered. 

“This is an accurate representation of what shipboard navigation looks like without all the dressing,” Vossler told DefenseScoop of one of the larger installations. 

He and Giovannelli highlighted the center’s educational courses and approaches for technology-led training. 

“We have all kinds of different ship classes in each of the simulators. So, depending on what you want to show an individual — either a student or the [crews of] ships that come through training — we can recreate a scenario,” Giovannelli explained.

That means if incidents occur, officials can use the data captured in the real-world events to simulate the exact environment leading up to them to help mariners learn about what went wrong.

Or, “the [commanding officer] can focus on, ‘Hey, I want to practice this one thing — or we’re heading out to X-Y-Z port and I want to have the opportunity to have my bridge team actually see what it’s like to do that,” Giovannelli said.

Currently at MSTCPAC, new surface warfare officers are trained with different simulators before they head out to missions at sea. They learn about the dynamics of working as a team on the bridge, navigation and shiphandling practices, how to deal with low-density and other complex traffic scenarios — and ultimately how to best apply the Navy’s “rules of the road” depending on what types of issues they might encounter.

A basic scenario is built for one of the main use cases, but as soon as students begin the simulation, instructors can manipulate elements of the context — like their course or speed — “so that way, I’m forcing the interaction, I force the student to have to assess the situation and then act,” Giovannelli also noted.

Enlisted sailors who support efforts around navigation and shiphandling are also set to be recurrently trained via the hub’s current and future simulators throughout their careers. With the newest simulator that’s still in-the-making — which is large compared to some of the others and looks like an actual bridge of a ship and should be ready for use in the next two years — leaders will also be able to better inform and conduct skills assessments. 

“Right now in a lot of the assessments that we do for navigation, we will take some assessors, they’ll head out on the ship, and then they’ll take the ship out to a port and we’ll do simulations while we’re on there. So, for example, if we have low visibility, we’ll do some training where we’ll put up some cheesecloth on the windows, sometimes, to simulate low visibility, or we’ll simulate casualties. The good thing here is [with the newer tech] I can actually run all of that in the simulator,” Giovannelli said.

In his role steering MSTCPAC, Giovannelli connects weekly with his colleagues leading the simulation centers at other U.S. military bases.

“Just yesterday, we had a mariners skills assessment synchronization that we do. So in that one, over the phone, we talked about, ‘Hey, how did we grade this one assessment? This was a difficult scenario that popped up and a student did the following thing.’ We have those conversations to ensure continuity of training and the same standards across the board — no matter which location you go — and I know that that’s one of the priorities for all of us,” he said.

Beyond those at the MSTC centers in San Diego and Norfolk, as well as at the Surface Warfare Schools Command in Newport, Rhode Island, there’s also simulators at all the fleets’ concentration areas, including in some nations outside of the U.S.

“So no matter where you’re stationed, you’re going to be able to go into the simulators and the ships, and their commanding officers can get that simulator training,” Giovanelli said.

Big potential

In their comprehensive investigation of the major ship collisions and other associated cases, experts found that “in every mishap, departures from procedures or approved customary practices were deemed to have directly contributed to the mishap.”

Among their many recommendations, the reviewers called for the Navy to “improve seamanship and navigation individual skills training for Surface Warfare Officer candidates, Surface Warfare Officers, Quartermasters and Operations Specialists” and to “create an objective, standardized assessment program to periodically assess individual seamanship and navigation skills over the course of a Surface Warfare Officer’s career.”

Giovannelli noted: “During a period early in the 2000s, we got rid of a lot of the training that junior officers get. We transitioned into something called ‘SWOs in a Box.’ It was a set of CDs, and we sent them off to their ship to get more on-the-job training and training off of the CDs. So now we’ve really shifted back to ‘let’s go back into classroom training and teach all the basics, have that consistency of training across the board, and get them all the [foundation] that they need before they head out to the ship.'”

While it’s still very much evolving, the commanding officer said he is already witnessing much higher “level of confidence” among mariners who recently completed simulation-based training at MSTCPAC and deploy to sea with the skills they learned there.

“We take course critiques after every course. You know — ‘What did we do well? What are the things that we could do better?’ — along those lines. And all of them pretty much say, ‘Hey, I’ve really gotten a lot out of this course and I feel a lot more comfortable heading back out to the ship,’” he said.

Unlike CD- or book-based training of past decades, simulators enable officials to interact and adapt with their team as they would on a ship.

“There’s a lot of different right ways of doing [this work]. There’s not just one answer to a problem,” Giovannelli said. He noted that in all the assessments he’s led in his career so far, he has “never seen two students do it exactly the same.” 

This is all “still in the early phases” but Giovannelli confirmed his team is collecting data as they move forward to improve how the service tracks training trends and improvements across the board.

In conversations with DefenseScoop, both he and Vossler also pointed out that none of the instructors at the center for the initial training courses are graduates of these more modern courses — yet.

“Those courses started after they were division officers and they kind of completed their tours. Probably early next year is when I will start getting instructors that have actually been through that simulation training,” Giovannelli said.

“But I’m excited too. Once we get instructors who have actually been through the entire course, you’ll see that that level of training kind of increases,” he added.

And as this pursuit continues to mature in the near term, he and the center’s other leaders are also keen to prioritize the integration of simulator capabilities. 

“Right now here in this simulator, I’m just focusing on navigation and seamanship — but we also have other components of maritime warfare interacting with other services and things like that. So, there’s a lot of potential. Once you start linking up different systems, you can go from the basics and then start moving up into integrated training, advanced training, training with other services and joint training as you’re doing different things. So there’s absolutely a lot, a lot of potential. You can take this I think anywhere you want to go,” Giovannelli said.

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Known as the Skies exercise series, the live simulation training events are aimed at developing guardians’ command-and-control skills. Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM) has already completed two exercises focused on live-fire electronic warfare operations — Black Skies — including one in September and another last month. 

The current tempo “I think is still insufficient,” Saltzman told DefenseScoop at a media roundtable during the Space Symposium.

“You’re not going to have the throughput that really gets the number of guardians through those training exercises that I think is required to really advance the training and the skills of the broader set of guardians that we need,” he said. “But baby steps — we’re working through this as quickly as we can.”

The next Black Skies exercise is now slated to be held sometime this fall.

STARCOM is also planning for two more live simulation exercises in the Skies series — Red Skies will focus on “orbital warfare,” while Blue Skies will train guardians in cyber warfare.

Since taking the helm as the Space Force’s top officer in November, Saltzman has made readiness one of his key priorities. That not only includes more frequent exercises, but the development of robust testing and training environments that leverage modern capabilities.

When asked by DefenseScoop if he thought the Space Force currently had the adequate training infrastructure to complete its upcoming Skies exercises, Saltzman said present resources are not enough.

“We are upping our resourcing to build the kind of testing and training infrastructure that we need, because right now it’s not sufficient,” he said. “In the areas where it is sufficient, it’s not at the kind of scale to get to all the guardians that we need.”

Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of Space Operations Command (SpOC), told reporters at a separate media roundtable that typical training for guardians involves training on the physical system itself and, in some cases, exercises conducted with simulations. However, those exercises are usually not able to accurately mimic the threats that the Space Force faces, he added.

“That’s typically white carded or a tabletop discussion — like, ‘What would you do if now there was a red threat that came up against you?’ There’s some value in all of that. We try to squeeze out as much learning as we can, but certainly that is not where we want to be,” Whiting said.

Instead, the Space Force wants to leverage offline, simulated systems that use physics-based models to emulate the tools, environments and adversaries a guardian might encounter in a real-life battle scenario, he said.

The Space Force is requesting $340 million in its fiscal 2024 budget proposal to bolster its training capabilities. Saltzman said the service is looking to improve technology like high-fidelity simulators that give guardians reps and sets for their tactics, and range environments that can simulate adversaries and threat environments.

“That’s where we’re doubling down on the investments to really robust that out and be able to produce that at scale so all guardians have access to advanced training, get the skills on the valid tactics to be successful in a threat environment,” Saltzman said.

Whiting also noted that because the space domain is thoroughly modeled in simulations by those that build the Space Force’s platforms, the service should be able to accurately mimic the threat environment.

However, “we’ve struggled to get that done, and a lot of folks are working hard on that — including STARCOM and Space Systems Command,” he added. “We’ve made some progress, but we just got to do better, and we owe our guardians and airmen a better training environment.”

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Broadly, LVC training combines real-world, in-person elements with virtual reality, simulation and other computer-generated technologies to enable service members to train more like they actually fight for combat of the future. 

Over the last decade or so, LVC has evolved from a concept to tangible training options on various bases. Now, Navy leaders are beginning to recognize how they might better link unfolding and upcoming LVC training efforts across their vast enterprise.

“I would say that in an environment that we should be pursuing, you could easily see how you might need some type of operation center to coordinate the timing, tempo and training opportunities available in a broad LVC network,” Rear Adm. Douglas Verissimo, the director of maritime operations for the U.S. Fleet, said Monday at the 2023 Sea-Air-Space conference.

In his view, “in the future, as these networks come together … there’s got to be an operation center that pulls together this joint all-domain, as much as we can piece together” the Navy’s LVC training assets and different teams at bases around the globe.     

He said the service also needs a means to better evaluate its training.

“Are they keeping us alive? Are they putting us in more jeopardy? And are we able to win with the tactics, techniques and procedures that we’re developing based on the human capital we have? And where do we need to invest in that human capital to make them more lethal?” Verissimo explained.

Other senior officials on a panel with the rear admiral agreed, including Cdr. Patrick Durnin, who serves as commanding officer of the East Coast strike fighter squadron VFA-81.

“They were just kind of throwing [the idea of a common operations center] out there — but the reality of it is that we need to continue to refine these processes just to make sure that we’re all working on the same playbook” and can ensure everyone who needs to continues to “have a good understanding of exactly how each service is going to provide the best capability that they can to fight,” Durnin told DefenseScoop after the panel. 

Despite the capacity limitation and overarching need, enabling a common operations hub for LVC training would be complex — and likely pricey.

Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, director of Air Warfare Division, N98, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, noted that service members with simulators in one part of the nation can connect and engage in training exercises with growlers and teams in another region.

“But just what I need everybody to understand is that when I do that I have chosen to use those simulators up in [one base] to conduct an East Coast training event, and now I’m not training growler aircrew [on that specific base] that day. And so this is a significant capacity piece that we’ve got to be able to forecast and then program for, to make sure we captured all of the training requirements and we’re using the simulators that we own to their best efficacy,” Loiselle explained on the panel. 

“Somebody has to be in charge of making a decision as to whether or not our simulator infrastructure is going to support something like, say, large-scale exercise 2023, or they’re going to support local training events — because they can only do one. And so that’s really what [Verissimo’s] talking about. Or, do we build out and spend the money necessary for a system with the capacity to do both? That’s pretty expensive,” he told DefenseScoop after the event.

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“We have to figure out a way to train at a larger distance than we are today,” Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, director of Air Warfare Division, N98, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said Monday during a panel at the 2023 Sea-Air-Space conference. 

To do that, the Navy is looking into a new concept deemed Strike Group Mobile Open Ocean Virtual Range, or SGMOOVR, Loiselle announced.

Broadly, LVC training applies real-life, in-person elements with augmented and virtual reality simulation and other computer-generated solutions to ultimately help service members train more like they actually fight in preparation for future conflicts. 

The Navy has made a lot of progress in its engineering and implementation of LVC training for different scenarios over the last several years. But fresh challenges are also surfacing. 

“The weapon systems that we’re developing these days are significantly longer-range than those that we have trained with in the past. And as we do that, we need the range infrastructure that will support that level of training,” Loiselle told DefenseScoop after the panel. 

“Most of the ranges over land are simply not large enough to conduct that training anymore — so that training is moving out over the water. And when you’re talking about training your ranges like that, you oftentimes are limited by the towers that are land-based that can receive the signals. So, the object is to build out something that is no longer limited by land base,” he explained.

Before each Navy carrier strike group departs for a real-world mission, it must complete a Composite Training Unit Exercise or COMPTUEX. During the panel, Loiselle pointed to those exercises to demonstrate what Navy officials envision with this new SGMOOVR concept.

“If you’re familiar with how we conduct a COMPTUEX off the coast — we’re now taking that command-and-control facility and we’re bringing it aboard our aircraft carriers, such that we can use an aircraft carrier as a central node,” and then essentially “develop a large training range central to that aircraft carrier so that we can get to the deployed training piece of this,” he explained.

Still, little is known publicly about SGMOOVR — and it is not a guarantee the Navy will scale it beyond the exploratory phase.

“It’s still a concept and pre-decisional,” a Navy spokesperson told DefenseScoop in an email Monday.

“Strike Group Mobile Open Ocean Virtual Range (SGMOOVR) is a concept to replicate ashore training range capabilities afloat. The concept is to embark an exercise control element and Tactical Combat Training System Increment II (TCTS II) on board a [nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, or] CVN,” the spokesperson said. 

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“It’s pretty clear that relying on the Air Force [for such training] — as we have the last couple of years, we wouldn’t be where we are without them — is not going to meet our requirements going forward,” the commandant said during a Senate subcommittee hearing on the fiscal 2024 budget request for the Navy and Marine Corps.

Berger and other military leaders are exploring “a couple options” to solve those evolving instructional challenges, he confirmed, which include “opening up a Naval school for unmanned pilots, ourselves,” or leaning on contractors. 

Uncrewed aerial systems and other emerging drone technologies are a major enabling element of Force Design 2030 — the Marine Corps’ big plan to reshape its combat power for future fights against high-tech adversaries. 

In 2020, the service set up a new military occupational specialty for operators that can advise commanders on deploying larger “Group 5” unmanned aerial systems, such as MQ-9 Reaper drones. Marines have been using those lethal, long-endurance, remotely-piloted aircraft in the Middle East since that year, with a great deal of training support from the Air Force. 

In May 2022, Berger told Congress about the Marine Corps’ plans to “expand the number of [drone] squadrons that we’re flying, the number of vehicles that we’re buying and the number of people that need to be trained” — with the near-term priority being to push “them out into the Pacific” to ultimately help deter China. Then, in August, the Navy awarded a $135.8 million contract to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. for eight MQ-9A Extended Range (ER) drones to be delivered to the Marine Corps in late 2023.  

The MQ-9 has wide-range sensors, synthetic aperture radar, significant loitering and surveillance capabilities, and the capacity to strike targets via the weapons it carries.

“While our commitment to uncrewed systems is unshakeable, we have concluded the Air Force’s capacity to generate trained MQ-9 UAS officers is insufficient to satisfy Marine Corps requirements,” Berger said in his written testimony ahead of Tuesday’s budget hearing. 

“At present, half of our total inventory of UAS officers (72 of 148) are not yet trained and qualified to operate the MQ-9. We are working with the Air Force to remedy this throughput issue. However, there is a need to direct the necessary resources in future budgets to establish a Naval UAS School to resolve this larger joint force issue,” he wrote. 

Responding to questions on that matter from Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., at the subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Berger confirmed that senior Navy and Marine Corps officials are exploring the potential of launching a UAS school of their own. 

“We don’t know yet what that would cost, where we would put it, the instructor base — all that sort of thing,” Berger said. However, “it’s pretty clear” to them that “relying on the Air Force” probably won’t be the best move as the sea services’ drone deployments continue to expand and mature. 

Spokespersons from the Navy and the Marine Corps have yet to provide DefenseScoop more information on this training requirement.

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The request comes as the U.S. is facing growing threats to its space systems, including cyber warfare activities; electronic attack platforms; lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors; ground-launched missiles; and “space-to-space orbital engagement systems” — in other words, satellites that can attack other satellites.

The enhanced operational test and training infrastructure that the Space Force plans to invest in “will be the backbone of our readiness as we prepare for high-intensity fights. This infrastructure will allow guardians to execute realistic training against simulated adversaries to validate our tactics,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference.

In September, Space Training and Readiness Command conducted its inaugural Black Skies exercise, which focused on electronic warfare. “Through these events, we are continuing continuously enhancing tactics and operational concepts to create a ready force for the emerging threats,” Saltzman said.

However, the training infrastructure still isn’t sufficient.

Saltzman told DefenseScoop that the Space Force is “still working through all the details” about where it will invest the $340 million.

“But just in general terms … [in the past] we thought of space as more of a benign environment. Our focus was on how do we get satellites to last as long as possible on orbit doing the missions that we need … It wasn’t prioritized in the same degree about thinking about a contested domain. Now, we are prioritizing that, obviously, but I don’t have the training facilities and infrastructure that allows us to do the kinds of simulations and training that we need” to fully prepare for that, he said.

“The simulators are built around procedural currency with the weapon systems, not necessarily interacting with a thinking adversary. So we want to enhance the simulators. We also recognize that range activities, which are so important to all of the other services to practice their skills to validate concepts to validate tactics — we don’t really have that either. So we’re expanding our capabilities to do constructive virtual training and ranges so we can conduct those kinds of events,” he added.

DefenseScoop asked Saltzman if guardians will be practicing for offensive as well as defensive operations.

“That’s a great question because, you know, I don’t think about it in those terms,” he said. “Operations can be offensive or defensive. And of course, we’re going to practice the full spectrum of operations so we can offer the secretary of defense and the president the full scope of independent options. That’s what’s required of us. But you know, we don’t talk about offensive F-35s and defensive F-35s [when it comes to Air Force fighter jets, for example] — it’s the operations they’re performing. And actually going through those war games and going through the exercises is where we develop those operational concepts.”

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Project Overmatch is the Navy’s contribution to Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), the Pentagon’s new concept for fighting, which envisions getting the right data to the right place for more informed decision making and command and control. While each of the other services have their own approaches, the Navy has been relatively tight-lipped in providing details about its effort.

The information warfare community is now partnering with the Project Overmatch team to develop training associated with the capabilities that will be demonstrated.

“It’s a really great partnership and it’s also informing, I think, how we may need to adjust our training paradigm long term,” Vice Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, commander of Naval Information Forces, said Thursday during a Defense One webcast. “If [Rear Adm.] Doug Small’s team delivers as we hope, it’s going to give us a lot more agility in how we integrate new technologies. And I think our old brick-and-mortar approach to the schoolhouse is something we’re going to have to rethink. This is really giving us an opportunity to consider how we do more mobile, distributed training, use virtual technologies and really look at just-in-time ways to empower our sailors to integrate new capabilities.”

Aeschbach said her forces are co-chairing a cross-functional team looking at integration and training, identifying new requirements and deeper levels of training that might be needed for sailors and officers.

She has previously spoken about the information warfare community’s need for more live, virtual, constructive (LVC) training given the sensitive nature of their capabilities.

Last year, her team worked with Small’s to pilot connecting systems to LVC training, and the results were positive, officials say.

“With success in that we’ll actually be able to measure how well sailors perform and be much more effective in the training we deliver,” Aeschbach said. “We will also be able to really exploit our capabilities because honestly, we don’t want to be out revealing some of the techniques and tactics that we’re developing where others can see what we’re doing or observe and draw lessons from our capabilities. It will be really powerful if we can deliver as we’re planning.”

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