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Brown said having a full view of the live, virtual and constructive actions during the event will allow commanders to see much more during their after-action reviews, leading to better lessons learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Col. Dane Salm, the director of the Range and Training Programs Division, said in the same interview that MCTIS would also \u201cdrastically change\u201d the experience of Marines in the field. As they go through patrols, instructors in the field have always been able to pause the action if something is unsafe, to try to adjudicate who shot whom, and more. But now, Salm said, the instructors will be able to show a squad leader on a tablet what they had planned to do versus what they actually executed \u00ad\u2014 giving real-time, visual cues as to what went wrong, while also allowing the squad to start over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MCTIS will make its formal debut in February at the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Warfighting Exercise 2-24 at Twentynine Palms, Salm said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More flexible virtual trainers<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
On the virtual side of the training portfolio, Salm said the Corps is in the midst of an extended user evaluation involving two options to replace the Supporting Arms Virtual Trainer, previously located at the Dome \u2014 a large building that was expensive to maintain and only existed at a few locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, Marines will move to a Joint Virtual Fires Trainer, where Marines outfitted with goggles and hand-held wands will conduct virtual training scenarios run through an application on a gaming laptop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Marine Corps is putting two companies through the evaluation at Twentynine Palms; Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona; and Marine Corps bases Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Salm said this effort will unshackle Marines from having to go to a certain building for training \u2014 meaning more Marines could train at once, train from remote posts or their barracks, and run more scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new Joint Virtual Fires Trainer will \u201cmultiply the amount of individuals that we\u2019re training and certifying as [joint terminal attack controllers] for the fleet,\u201d Salm said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, Joseph Lomangino, action officer for Project Tripoli, said in an interview the service had already discontinued use of its Combined Arms Command and Control Training Upgrade System, or CACCTUS, which similarly involved a lot of computers and server stacks in a large building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe determined we can achieve the same training and increase the density of that training across the Marine Corps by replacing the CACCTUS with the [Marine Common Virtual Platform],\u201d he said, referring to a common laptop with open standards that could be used for a range of live, virtual and constructive training needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About 1,600 laptops for combined arms and close-air support training have replaced six CACCTUS locations across the Corps. The Marine Common Virtual Platform will replace those laptops once the service chooses the final hardware, Lomangino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That same laptop will also be used in the final Joint Virtual Fires Trainer, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This move to laptop-based training only works if they are connected to a robust network with realistic simulations and scenarios, Lomangino noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Corps developed the Marine Training Enterprise Network and has since connected it to the Navy\u2019s larger Navy Continuous Training Environment, itself available globally and around the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, \u201cinstead of units having to pile into a center or fly to a center,\u201d they can use laptops to conduct training anywhere \u00ad\u00ad\u2014 and alongside anyone else in the virtual environment,\u201c Lomangino said. \u201cYou can have units in different, disparate locations train together in that environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown said the simulations will also be better, as Marines are ditching the MAGTF Tactical Warfare Simulation that\u2019s nearly four decades old and moving instead of the Joint Live Virtual Constructive Federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[The MAGTF Tactical Warfare Simulation] was a great simulation. \u2026 It did everything, but it did it about an inch deep,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAs we move into new training environments that are being dictated by new operational environments, we need something better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Joint LVC Federation includes high-quality simulations that all the services and combatant commands will use. Salm said the exercise Steel Knight \u2014 a naval, joint and international training exercise that recently concluded at Camp Pendleton \u2014 leveraged the Navy Continuous Training Environment network and the Joint LVC Federation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery exercise we see, either going on at Twentynine Palms or even in the Pacific, like Balikatan next year, we\u2019re going to continue to build upon the last exercise and adding more and more and more aspects of [Project] Tripoli to it,\u201d Salm added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current fiscal year was meant to pave the way for the larger proliferation of laptops and other hardware that would be fielded in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026, Lomangino said. But the ongoing continuing resolution funding the government has hindered the effort, as the measure doesn\u2019t allow the Corps to start new programs nor increase spending on existing programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The three officials declined to talk about planned or actual spending for Project Tripoli, due to ongoing budget uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, Lomangino said that by divesting of single-task trainers and replacing them with commercial and government off-the-shelf technology that already exists, the Corps is able to go from \u201ca limited LVC capability to an enterprise-level LVC capability without having to go through massive, extreme expenditures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown said the effort would certainly lead to cost savings in the future because the service won\u2019t have to maintain massive buildings that house large trainers, and it will be cheaper to upgrade laptops rather than replace entire trainers that become obsolete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, he added, those savings are a secondary or tertiary benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe application of virtual [and] constructive alongside the live is meant to produce a better trained Marine and a more combat-ready organization. You can equate it to a pitcher in the bullpen warming up before stepping onto the mound,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe reason we\u2019re doing this is Force Design, and Force Design needs this to be successful. And I don\u2019t want to overhype it, but the concepts and the formations and the capabilities \u2014 if they don\u2019t have a trained Marine with their hands on those and executing those, Force Design would fail.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Marines will continue moving away from single-purpose virtual trainers in large buildings to simulations run from laptops on a robust global network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":118154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":26,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,29,36,103,26,164],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3354],"class_list":["post-65976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-newsletters","category-surface-navy-association","category-training-sim","category-training-simulation-report"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"J4GCIEDGGBHIBKJOTJLLES3VWY","arc_canonical_url":"\/training-sim\/2023\/12\/29\/marines-to-roll-out-improvements-to-live-simulated-training-in-2024\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1975313.jpg.jpg\")
\u2018Something better\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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