ORLANDO, Fla. – Six small companies competed in a game show style competition designed to find innovative solutions to Air Force training challenges, during the Industry/Interservice Training Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando earlier this month.
The event, also known as Match Game, was organized and hosted by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Simulators Division, which is the lead organization for the acquisition and sustainment of Air Force aircrew training systems.
Round One of the competition called for companies to demonstrate a simulator system that would allow aircrew members to carry out large scale global training exercises virtually.
“As we talk about fifth generation [aircraft] and being able to do mission rehearsal in large-scale global engagements, the way we’re going to do that in the future is in a simulated environment,” said Margaret Merkle, Innovation Program Manager within the Simulators Division. “We don’t have ranges big enough, and with all the satellite surveillance, we don’t have the security that we need to run those exercises in the real world, so we have to do them in a simulated environment.”
Fusion Constructive was the winner of Round One.
The company demonstrated a simulator system with a global battlefield that allowed users to train/participate from an operations center perspective, all the way down to running missions on an airfield.
In Round Two of the Match Game companies were asked to demonstrate augmented or virtual reality solutions that could provide training to expeditionary forces or folks deployed quickly with little time to train on equipment or devices.
BUNDLAR won this round, with a presentation that showed interactive scenarios where a user was able to get “hands on” training with various equipment including some items that they would never touch unless in an emergency situation.
While no contracts were awarded as part of the competition, the event served as a platform to showcase technology ready for transition, and match companies with Air Force units with specific training needs.
“Match Game was set up in part so we could survey some of the [training] tools that are out in the marketplace, that we weren’t familiar with, in order to see how we could possibly use those tools in the future,” said Merkle. “In particular, there is technology that I saw during the competition, that I would like to explore using within our simulators Holodeck.”
The Simulators Division is planning for events at I/ITSEC 2023, and will continue to work with AFWERX on Small Business Innovative Research projects.