Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/196923
M MoDelling & siMuLaTiOn by chris thatcher StanDarDiZing URbAn OpERATiOnS TRAining W ith more than half of the world's population now living in cities, operations in urban environments will continue to be a prominent condition of future combat missions. Through lessons from the Balkans, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Canadian Army has honed the tactics, techniques and procedures to operate effectively in the complex environments of villages and towns, combating a foe while simultaneously working with the civilian population. As it continues to refine its Army of Tomorrow operating concept, however, the army will need to upgrade the training facilities and live simulation systems it now employs to prepare soldiers for urban operations. Across the country, the five force generating bases of Edmonton, Shilo, Petawawa, Valcartier and Gagetown, along with the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre (CMTC) in Wainwright, have each developed their own facilities to deliver that training. But as Major Bruno Di Ilio explains, the process for developing the sites has lacked cohesion. "We have had urban ops training facilities going way back. It has always been a base driven initiative – each base developed its own site, often using sea containers or simple concrete or wood structures. The problem is many of the materials used in the structures do not stand up well to the training and weather conditions. In some locations the structures were built quite substantive, so the project decided to use the same designs elsewhere in the country. The units have always understood the importance of the facilities, but 36 OcTOBer/nOVeMBer 2013 did the best they could to address the issue with the resources available." Di Ilio leads Urban Operations Training System (UOTS), a project to standardize and institutionalize training across the six locations. The project is part of what he calls the WES family, a larger upgrade to the army's weapon effects simulation system. Since 2005, WES has been key to preparing successive rotations of soldiers for deployment in Afghanistan, but the laser tag-like system has been limited to operations conducted in open terrain. Officially stood up in 2006 and approved by the Minister of National defence in 2012, the UOTS project will create building simulators, allowing the army to integrate WES and other enhancements into the urban operations training environment. "The soldiers will kit up the same way," he said, "but UOTS will support a variety of training solutions. WES is typically www.vanguardcanada.com laser-based. Over the past few years, the training component has identified the need for several different training solutions, paint ball-type ammunition and frangible ammo. Urban ops will now take both into account." More important, it will provide units and their commanders the ability to operate in a complex urban environment with the conditions to create scenarios that require difficult decision making. "UOTS is not just a force on force exercise or the clearing of buildings," Di Ilio explained. "To create the complex environment, the human element and culture of the inhabitants are needed to understand the challenges. UOTS only delivers the instrumented building simulators. CMTC, for example, has developed scenarios, dealing with access to water for civilians, or sanitation issues, that commanders must work with in an urban environment. The delivery of instrumented building simula-