Canadian troops pushed back an invading force from the allied nation of Atropia this week as part of a UN military mission.
If you didn’t notice, that’s because Atropia doesn’t exist. About 300-some soldiers from 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group at CFB Edmonton spent the last week liberating this fictional nation as part of Exercise Virtual Ram, a computer-based simulation meant to train them in battlefield tactics.
Virtual Ram is part of the base’s preparation for potential real-life action next year, said Maj. Jesse van Eijk, who was in charge of the troops in this exercise.
“The soldier that’s the fastest, can shoot the straightest, and jump the highest is really not effective if he is not in the right place at the right time with the right equipment, and it’s the headquarters that enables that,” he said.
This exercise was meant to train headquarters staff in how to direct thousands of troops at once, and uses the same protocols that they’ll use in real-life situations, van Eijk said.
The simulation saw command-level troops from all units at the base direct some 10,000 virtual soldiers as they pushed a heavily armed force from the pretend state of Ariana out of Atropia, the latter of which just happened to be geographically identical to Wainwright, Alta., explained Jeff Wilson, the contractor whose team set up the 100-some networked computers in the exercise.
“If we were doing this exercise right now (for real), it would cost millions and millions and millions of dollars a day,” he said. With computers, they can pull it off for the price of a few buckets of electricity.
In the old days, training exercises like this were similar to a role-playing game, where soldiers would make decisions based on what directors told them they saw and heard, said St. Albert Lt.-Col. Darren Hart, who wrote and directed this week’s exercise.
“What simulation allows us to do is actually let that happen organically,” he said, as you can model the behaviour of each vehicle and soldier in real time.
The exercise started Nov. 18 and ended Thursday afternoon, said CFB Edmonton spokesperson Capt. Ken Jacobson. Headquarters staff were in tents surrounded by barbed wire outside for 12 to 36 hours at a time, while troops controlling the units they commanded were inside the Lecture Training Facility, controlling 100 soldiers each from their workstations.
Hart oversaw both groups from his “god screens” inside the training facility, which showed Canadian positions in blue and enemy ones in red. While the soldiers outside were directing the blue team, he was managing the reds, who were role-played by a small group of soldiers in a different room.
Inside the training facility, troops gathered around maps and screens to discuss how to carry out their commanders’ orders, clicking on screens to build bridges, move ammunition, evacuate casualties, and launch attacks. A few in the recon squad got to fly drones through a 3D map of Atropia, spotting defeated and active enemy units for everyone else.
van Eijk said the toughest part of the exercise was figuring out how to get some 8,000 soldiers across a river while under attack. The red team also harried them throughout with tanks, artillery, rockets from the tree-line and flanking manoeuvres.
By Thursday morning, close to the end of the exercise, the Canadians had mostly swept the disputed zone of enemy units and were preparing for a counterattack by a mass of troops just beyond it.
Jacobson said the garrison would hold a similar exercise next year, except with actual troops and vehicles, as part of Exercise Maple Resolve in Wainwright.
