This year at IITSEC 2019, the theme of the event was “Winning the war of cognition by pushing readiness and lethality boundaries.” As the Modern Military Training team attended numerous sessions and walked the show floor talking to industry executives, there was no doubt that cognitive readiness is at the core of today’s advanced training systems.

Daniel Serfaty, CEO of Aptima, summed up the show-wide trend well. “Can we make human intelligence and artificial intelligence work together seamlessly as a team?” he asked. “If AI is going to be a key technology to enhance learning and…education, we cannot just put that technology there.”

Fortunately, military buyers are making real progress on this cognitive teaming. In his time on the show floor, David Smith, Senior Vice President and General Manager at TRU Simulation and Training, has “seen a lot more serious buyers…coming to the table and asking harder questions” about augmented and virtual reality applications “with a much more nuanced understanding of the limitations and where they can see it in their long term view.

There is, however, still a ways to go before these emerging technologies—AI, AR, and VR—are fully realized as tools that foster warfighter readiness, fully engaging the trainee in an immersive environment. Nick Gibbs, VP/GM of Simulation & Training Solutions, Collins Aerospace, brought this up.

“I think there’s an interesting contrast today,” he told us. Between the low-cost ground vehicle and dismounted warfighter simulations and high-end, high-fidelity fast jet trainers, there is a discrepancy in how comprehensively the training solutions the military is asking for are engaging the learner. “That, really, is a gap that needs to be bridged.”

Hear the full commentary from these experts in our video below

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