| Business Case | The US Army mandates within IWTS TC 3-20.40 that Soldiers train on small arms qualification tables employing simulation before moving to live-fire training and qualification. The directive aims to achieve increased percentages of first-pass live-fire qualification in less time and at a reduced cost. The Army mandate is also in response to NDAA 2023 language. At the time of the directive, the US Army Program of Record was the Engagement Skills Trainer (EST). Shortly after issuing that order, resource sponsors and the Program Executive Officer shifted program funding to the OTA to develop the Squad Virtual Trainer (SVT) with a projected delivery to the Guard no sooner than 2028. Programmatically, no sustainment is available for the current system to support US Army National Guard small arms weapons training simulators.
Further, the EST does not meet Soldier training skills delivery to standard nor Soldier throughput requirements. EST and all other current Army program small arms initiatives leave the National Guard with no acceptable, technically relevant, and engineering reliable small arms training simulator. The Guard’s available training white space for all competencies, including small arms qualification, is a unique operational challenge. With the challenges to available training time, the National Guard must acquire the small arms solution capable of ensuring the necessary lift to Soldier weapon skill Operational Availability (Ao) intended by the NDAA and IWTS policy initiatives. The capability gap has left several National Guard states to directly source and fund contractors to maintain these inadequate and unreliable legacy systems or try to procure their own with State appropriations. In response to the above-stated realities, the Guard is seeking a study-validated small arms training simulator capability that will deliver training meeting the following parameters, pending delivery of the SVT capability (all system capabilities should already have a formally validated study conducted and issued by a DoD Service component): a proven simulation training transfer-to-live-fire first-pass qualification above 90%, a validated system up-time over 95%. In addition, the DoD Service study must have validated an increase in Soldier lethality by over 10%, and DoD study must have validated a rise in trainee contact time (efficiency) over live-fire training capacity delivery of at least 500%, and a system Operational Availability (Ao) of greater than 99% for scheduled training. Human performance small arms training technology has proven to be the most technology capable of filling these gaps described. Simulation systems with an existing one-of-a-kind DOD capability validation study and US Army Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) demonstrating system readiness and delivery. A simulation system that has all the IWTS TC 3-20.40 qualification tables built and scored, with SIM tables beining certified by MCoE would be critical to meeting all current standards. To maximize usage and success, the system should be mobile, transportable, deployable, and ready to deliver at the Point of Need (PON) for the National Guard.
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| Recommendation | The National Guard seeks Congress's consideration to appropriate funds to the National Guard to meet the intent of NDAA language by fielding relevant, patented, Point of Need delivery, small arms, and Human Performance-based, synthetic training systems throughout the Guard. Thus, immediately filling all training gaps with a universal, proven, and patented enterprise solution to generate highly skilled Soldiers with fewer resources and less time.
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