The U.S. Army is getting its first complete combined arms tactical trainer as the Close Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT) program expands to include dismounted infantry.

“Commanders will be able to put their infantry, armor, tracked, wheeled and air soldiers together and have one combined exercise, which is not possible today,” said CCTT assistant program manager John Foster, at the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI).

CCTT is in its 13th year, but it has mostly been limited to vehicle and aviation simulators.

Now, the program has put out requirements for an $85 million contract that will create a new squad-based infantry trainer linking to CCTT’s existing trainers for heavy armor, light vehicles and helicopters. The new Dismounted Soldier System (DMS) will be used by the infantry brigade combat teams, airborne, Special Forces and Rangers.

Every CCTT facility will receive a DMS system. The winner will be chosen sometime between February and April. “It is encompassing the entire Army now,” Foster said. “I’m pretty much touching every Army installation out there.”

There has been a long, hard road to building the Army’s first combined arms tactical trainer, according to Foster. “We tried for many years to get one. This is like the third attempt. It’s a very hard system to do. There is a lot of expectation about what the system has to offer. There has been a lot of debate as to whether it’s more cost-effective to do it live.”

CCTT began as an armored simulator, but has expanded into a family of simulators, which comprises the armored trainers (called the CCTT system to distinguish from the overall CCTT program), the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (AVCATT) and the Reconfigurable Vehicle Tactical Trainer (RVTT). The fourth component will be the DMS.

Foster said it’s too early to say what DMS will look like. It might be a helmet-mounted display, a projector system or something else. PEO STRI is hoping to use a commercial off-the-shelf product such as Quantum3D’s ExpeditionDI.

However, Mark Saturno, director of business development for Cubic Simulation Systems, said, “Based on what we know, the Army is interested in a man-worn training system that will negate the requirements for large-scale infrastructure. Something that is portable and lets them train on home station and in theater. One of the objectives is mission rehearsal in a high-fidelity environment, a multi-person environment at the fireteam and up to the squad level.”

Cubic hopes its CombatRedi system will snag the DMS contract. CombatRedi consists of four components, according to Saturno. One is a helmet-mounted display called Redisite. Another is a backpack computer called RediTac. “With the amount of data that is transferred between components, you need a powerful computer to handle that,” Saturno said.

CombatRedi will use wireless weapons — called RediFire — from Cubic’s existing Engagement Skills Trainer 2000. “The government can leverage the thousands of weapons that they already have,” said Saturno.

The final CombatRedi component is RediTrack, which tracks motions by the users, such as hand signals. Requirements are for DMS to use Virtual Battlespace 2 as its underlying simulation.

CombatRedi will not require images projected on walls as in a 360-degree convoy trainer. “The way that they’ll set it up is that they will have grids on the floor, 10-foot by 10-foot squares that each trainee will operate in. They will be able to do things like kneel, crawl, jump, climb stairs, but they’ll do that in their grid.”

CCTT is designed to connect command posts to the simulators, enabling artillery, engineer and logistics units to participate. Foster said users have moved away from using simulated battalion tactical operations centers and fire direction centers in favor of using their actual battle command equipment.

There are eight fixed CCTT sites, including Forts Benning, Carson, Hood, Knox, Riley and Stewart, as well as Grafenwoehr in Germany and Camp Casey in Korea. There are also eight mobile CCTT systems, plus 32 RVTT facilities. They will be joined by 51 DMS facilities.

— Michael Peck