Broadband intelligence training system - Distance Learning - to provide Internet-based training to soldiers and civilians in the home - Brief Article

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Jan-March, 2002

The Training Development Directorate, Futures Development Integration Center, USAIC&FH, is introducing a broadband intelligence training system designed to provide high fidelity adaptive training with collaborative learning environments to soldier and civilian homes that will not compromise operational security. The training available includes counterintelligence, intelligence analyst, force protection, and foreign language training for active and reserve component military professionals.

The commercial broadband technology will be used as a way to provide high bandwidth for Internet-based training and collaboration to soldier and civilian homes. The Internet Protocol Direct Broadcast Satellite (IPDBS) technology, combined with software for asynchronous and synchronous learning environments, exploit the technology and implement cost savings, particularly when bundled with existing communications and entertainment services.

The proposed initiative complements The Army Distance Learning Program by extending training from the classroom to the entity level. We postulate that integrated services to the home will allow training to become part of the user's lifelong culture in a convenient environment that facilitates growth, and optimizes time. One advantage is the advancement of warfighters from analog to the digital environment.

In addition to delivering courseware, the Intelligence Center is challenged to teach soldiers to effectively adapt to unknown and/or rapidly changing environments. The courseware created in this authentic environment requires collaboration and can be media intensive when using a significant bandwidth requirement. To produce courseware, the Constructivist Learning Theory by J. Bruner is used as the basis for instructional design strategies. Analysis showed IPDBS technology as the most efficient way to meet audience requirements globally and deliver high fidelity products combined with full motion multi-point collaboration. In theory, constructive and virtual simulations could also be distributed to the home.

We can ascertain that those who are most successful in the information age warfare and global commerce are those immersed in the information age techniques as a culture. Integrating our training with communication and entertainment in the home will in turn mature the user base needed for global competition. Soldiers and civilians will become globally ready when the information age is commonplace, just as the telephone and television are today.

The benefits will transfer from elementary to higher education, and on into the business sectors nationwide providing an industrial base that will allow the United States to be more competitive in a global economy. An ancillary benefit could be an increase in the number and quality of potential recruits who may be introduced to the military ethos in their formative years.

The Intelligence Center is proposing a government and industry arrangement that would implement a 1000 user pilot over two years. This will validate the potential to capitalize on IPDBS return path technology in conjunction with courseware platforms optimized for real-time delivery. The business model will provide the impetus needed to sustain industry support as economies of scale create competitive pricing that will lower the government cost to distribute in-home training to more users. This results in higher quality products and services delivered to more users for considerably lower cost than the Army currently spends for distance leaning, a pervasive market base for industry, and a technically competent, competitive country.