Two interns at the United States Marine Corps’ Program Executive Office Land Systems have developed a digital wargame to aid the deployment of counter-uncrewed aircraft systems (C-UAS) capabilities.
David Appelt, a rising senior at Virginia Tech, majoring in cybersecurity management analytics, and Rithwick Erabelly, a rising senior at Purdue University, majoring in aerospace engineering, spent eight weeks working closely with the Program Manager for Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD), Master GySgt Jacob Bucinski, to develop the interactive wargaming training module.
Their game, titled “Whack-A-Drone”, is a 2-D platform designed to help users’ assess where to place their assets in specific mission scenarios to combat threatening drone swarms. The game provides an alternative to real-life scenario training, which, while necessary, can be both risky and costly.
“The intern’s wargaming simulator gets after one of the more complicated training shortfalls the ground-based air defense community has,” said Bucinski. “Their design provides a method to train employment in a low cost, non-manpower intensive, yet easily accessible package. Being able to provide a leader feedback on how effective their employment was is incredibly valuable.”
To produce results that would most closely mimic real-life outcomes, Appelt coded thousands of possible drone swarm scenarios by pulling different management types to simulate what would happen in a real mission with real warfighters.
Erabelly explained that the point of the game is to bring together all of the C-UAS assets to teach the Marine how to create an integrated air defence system. “A Marine may know how to operate the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) on an individual level, how to command it and strategically place it at different points. The Marine may not know how to use all these systems together, and make sure they’re covering the objective points against different types of [drone] swarms.”
Master Sgt. Brandon Meadors, MADIS training subject matter expert for GBAD, has been looking for a digital solution to teach these concepts for several years now and said the wargame training could save lives.
For more information
Defense Civilian Training Corp’s programme
Image: Helena Yared, Program Executive Officer Land Systems via DVIDS
