I/ITSEC 2023: US Marine Corps seek AI capabilities for training purposes

Aligned with the latest version of Force Design 2030, the US Marine Corps (USMC) has been seeking ways to increase the use of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within the training realm.

The service is divesting its legacy training systems and simulations to adopt solutions that can replicate current and future operating environments with high fidelity, allow preparing marines to perform dangerous tasks in a secure way and reduce training costs.

Speaking at I/ITSEC 2023 in Orlando, Florida, Lt Gen Kevin M. Iiams, commanding general of US Marine Corps (USMC) Training and Education Command, claimed that the branch ‘needs more AI’, as well as accelerate the process to access the technology and its advantages.

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‘We need to find ways to go even faster with our acquisitions,’ Iiams pointed out. ‘You [industry] are going to show us what you have, where the path is and let us move to that capability very quickly, so that our nation can be successful.’

USMC is interested in solutions to measure the effectiveness of personnel and to support the decision-making process. Moreover, the service has been conducting several AI-related initiatives including research into modelling and simulation.

Project Tripoli is one of those efforts and seeks to expand and modernise the Marine Corps training environment (MCTE) in order to integrate the live, virtual and constructive training domains, as well as the data from ranges, devices, simulators and constructive forces.

It is planned to blend live-on-range entities with live-in-simulator personnel and AI-driven avatars to generate a seamless training environment that is multi-echelon scalable, enclaved for highly classified programs and globally available on-demand.

Tripoli is also intended to combine the arms-training range of the future, providing an all-domain environment that replicates similar conditions, threats and capabilities that marines may face in current and future battlefields.

US Marines using a weapons training simulation system. (Photo: USMC)

Part of the project, the Live-Virtual-Constructive Training Environment (LVC-TE) will fully integrate data from ranges, devices, simulators and constructive forces to enable real-time interaction between geographically dispersed Marine Corps, Joint and partner nation units.

LVC-TE is intended to mitigate safety risks and minimise exposure of critical warfighting capabilities to US adversaries. By Q4 FY2024, the USMC plans to deploy an initial LVC-TE capability to five sites: 29 Palms, Camp Pendleton, Camp Lejeune, and Marine Corps Bases Hawaii and Okinawa.

The Pentagon is also paying great attention to AI and has taken several measures to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the procurement of AI capability.

Moreover, the Pentagon currently runs several projects and programmes, and is conducting experimentation to identify the best ways to integrate the data produced by various sources.

The US Army, meanwhile, carries out tests and demonstrations of AI and machine-learning use under Project Convergence and is building up partnerships with academic, industry and other partners for education and R&D through the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C).

Shephard's I/ITSEC 2023 coverage is sponsored by: