By Cheryl Pellerin American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 11, 2011 - The Navy is exploring virtual worlds for applications in the air and under the sea, including the real-time design of future command-and-control spaces for submarines.
In late 2007, the Division Newport leadership set out to determine whether "rapidly evolving technologies like gaming engines, Web 2.0 and a new thing called virtual worlds could impact our undersea warfare domain," Aguiar told American Forces Press Service. At the time, Aguiar designed advanced computer systems for submarine attack centers. "Even with that fairly focused domain knowledge," he said, "I could appreciate that virtual worlds like Second Life had a lot of potential for rapid prototyping of command-and-control spaces, training of systems or tactics and visualization of data analysis." Nearly four years later, Aguiar said, his team is looking hard at Second Life, Teleplace, RealWorld, Open Simulator and other virtual worlds "to understand their strengths and weaknesses and limitations as we apply them to military requirements." This includes "bringing the virtual worlds into our laboratory, firing them up and getting some hands-on experience," he added. Division Newport supplies the technical foundation for conceptualizing, developing, fielding, modernizing and maintaining Navy undersea systems. The work ranges from research to supporting fleet operational capabilities and especially applied research and system development. Virtual world capabilities lend themselves to many of these tasks, he said. Aguiar's team describes virtual worlds as the coming together of gaming engines, Web 2.0 and classic modeling and simulation. "The real-time dynamics of the environment is the power of virtual worlds," Aguiar said. As avatars, he added, users can walk into any 3-D virtual environment and have the freedom to interact with each other and with the environment as if they were truly collocated in a physical space. "If you think of those as the core capabilities," he said, "different problems we come across take advantage of some of those features." Training is one of the most effective ways to use virtual worlds, Aguiar said. "We can very easily and quickly, sometimes even in real time, create training content that shows, say for tactical computer displays, how the data is generated," he said. In a virtual world, student avatars can actually walk into life-sized tactical plots rather than staring at an image on a computer monitor. "It's almost like [being able to] climb a double-helix DNA molecule," he said. "You can turn what would have been a passive classroom session where somebody's lecturing on how that plot is generated into an interactive experience where the user is literally walking into the data." Such a capability, which research has shown to greatly improve a student's absorption of fundamental concepts, Aguiar said, makes virtual worlds "stand out from all of the other ways you can give out training." And in a virtual world, lots of things can be done at once. For the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, these include visualization, immersive learning, conferencing, outreach, joint forces collaboration, command and control, distributed modeling and simulation, curriculum enrichment, international collaboration and scenario simulation. In a virtual training environment, a remote instructor can teach student avatars from all over the world in a single virtual classroom. When the students are finished with that, Aguiar said, they can walk out the door and jump into a serious game, say a scenario simulation event where they're piloting a submarine and doing tactical missions. Then they can go into some kind of command-and-control experiment. "One of the powers of a virtual world is that it gets away from stovepiped training concepts and allows the integration of [traditional] and virtual training components in a single environment," he said. Beyond training, Aguiar said, "I know my Army and Air Force brethren are interested in virtual worlds for what I would call scenario simulation -- creating a virtual environment that matches a real-world environment so they can do some type of group scenario." At NUWC, he said, "we're using it for collaborative engineering." In this application, Aguiar and his team are exploring the use of virtual worlds for three phases of command-and-control design. First, they work with the Office of Naval Research and directly with the fleet to generate a series of future attack center spaces in real time. Through workshops, fleet participants and Office of Naval Research subject-matter experts meet in virtual-world workshops from wherever they are in the country, Aguiar said, "and in real time we build out these attack centers." In a 45-minute session, he added, "as fast as the fleet could say, 'I want this display here and I want to move this function there,' we're able to capture and build out a full future attack-center concept." Next, NUWC uses models generated during the rapid prototyping of command-and-control spaces to visualize how people interact with the tactical data. "Specifically," Aguiar explained, "we visualize how information flows from person to person and person to console through that space as the mission evolves." The information tells designers how the space will operate when it's built. In the third phase, which Aguiar's team demonstrated in August 2009, they took a Virginia-class submarine attack center model and put it into a virtual world. "The critical technology piece is that we were able to take the virtual displays in the virtual attack center and connect them to the real tactical systems," he said. "The fleet operators, as they're sitting down as avatars looking at tactical displays, have full remote control of those tactical systems." Aguiar calls this team-level application sharing. "Not only could each operator see their own screen, they could turn their heads and see their neighbor's screen or talk to their neighbor," he said. Or a commanding officer or analyst could stand behind a group of people and talk to them and see everybody's screen while everybody is remotely distributed on the network, he added. "The real people can be anywhere, sitting in front of a generic console," Aguiar said. "But once they're in that virtual attack center they have the critical elements they need to perform as a team, practicing or experimenting on a real mission -- human dynamics, the model environment and connection to live tactical systems." Although this was a small demonstration, Aguiar added, "in our demo, we witnessed equivalent performance whether they were working in the virtual space or the physical space." Another benefit, he said, is the potential cost savings realized by doing rehearsal and planning activities in a virtual space before holding a live concept-of-operation experiment event. Elsewhere in the Navy, the leadership at Naval Air Systems Command headquarters in Patuxent River, Md., is exploring the value of virtual worlds. Karen Cooper is the principal investigator for Future Workforce Technologies and Strategies at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, and is spearheading virtual world investigation. Cooper said within the Navy, the Naval Sea Systems Command is the leader in virtual-world development efforts and the Naval Air Warfare Command is the leader in validation and empirically testing these worlds to calculate their real value "beyond the bling and beyond the build." Navair, she said, is working "to examine whether virtual worlds really [deliver] a return on investment, increased performance, better understanding, shortened time to learn, and rapid prototyping and acquisition streamlining." Navair is also partnering with Navsea's Carderock Division, which is leading an innovation prototype that involves virtual worlds, Cooper said. Navair's role is to make sure that people actually learn in virtual world scenarios and that the environment is engaging. Working on the prototype is a team of specialists from Navsea Carderock and Philadelphia, from Rowan University in New Jersey, and Cooper from Navair Patuxent River in Maryland." For the six-month project, Cooper said, the commands are working together on a shipboard emergency-response training scenario which is begin developed in the virtual world Teleplace. In the scenario, she said, a sailor as his avatar is working at a virtual console from which he controls engine-room equipment. The training involves something that goes wrong in the engine room and this shows up as alerts on the console. The sailor must take certain actions to respond to the emergency. "As a training scenario we can use virtual worlds to observe the sailor's response, including response time and response patterns," Cooper said. The virtual simulation also can accommodate a group of sailors to accommodate team building skills including communication, coordination and leadership skills. "We can actually record the scenario and then play it back as an after-action review," she added. On a real ship or in a large, high-end mock-up simulator, she added, "we'd only be able to send one or two sailors through every two hours, and it would be significantly more costly." "The powerful part, Cooper continued, "is because the scenario is available in a virtual world, you can set up training around the clock and the instructors and learners can be geographically dispersed." In this effort, Cooper said, the commands are partnering with Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. Students are helping build the training infrastructure in the virtual world and receiving credit at the university for their work. The Navy commands are also working together to draft a virtual world roadmap for the Navy, Cooper said. The roadmap is still in draft form, she said. But the hope is that eventually it will go before the commands and then to the chief of naval operations. Cooper said the Navy also is contributing to an Army-led effort called the Federal Virtual World Challenge, an annual public competition for developing the best uses of virtual worlds. Navy evaluators joined others from the Defense Department to choose recipients of challenge awards. The 2010 theme was training; this year it was artificial intelligence. Navair leads the evaluation portion of the challenge, she said. "Part of the purpose behind the challenge is to advance the state of virtual world technology specific to the theme of the year," Cooper explained, "but it's also to create cross expertise and knowledge growth across the DOD." These are all examples of joint DOD and Navy partnerships along with academia, she added, to grow and advance the state of the technology. | ||||||||
| Related Sites: Special: Virtual Worlds | ||||||||
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Saturday, May 14, 2011
Navy Explores Engineering, Training in Virtual Worlds
Friday, May 13, 2011
First Lady Announces Fitness Commitments
By Elaine Sanchez American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 10, 2011 - Yesterday I visited the White House to attend a "Let's Move" fitness and nutrition event for children of National Guardsmen and reservists hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama.
But before she broke a sweat, the first lady first unveiled three new "Let's Move" commitments specifically designed for military kids and teens. They include: -- Members of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition have committed to doing a special series of events and outreach with military families all across the country. Among upcoming events, championship NASCAR driver Carl Edwards will visit military bases in connection with his weekly races, and former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, along with a team of wounded warriors, will start climbing Mount Kilimanjaro today. -- The International Health, Racquet and Sports Club Association will offer free memberships to immediate family members of actively deployed National Guard and Reserve members. Starting June 1, people can log onto the Let's Move website to find a club in their area and sign up for free. -- Also for these families, the American Council on Exercise has agreed to provide at least 1 million hours of free personal training and fitness instruction. Obama encouraged military families to visit the Let's Move website to learn more about these commitments. For more on this event, read my American Forces Press Service article, "First Lady Invites Guard, Reserve Kids to Fitness Event." For more military family-related posts like this one, visit the Family Matters Blog or check out Family Matters onFacebook or Twitter. | ||
| Related Articles: First Lady Invites Guard, Reserve Kids to Fitness Event | ||
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Former Drill Sergeant, Trainee Reunite
 Kunar Provincial Reconstruction Team KUNAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan: Army 1st Lt. Anthony S. Goble is relatively new to his life as a commissioned officer, but he was reminded of his days as an enlisted soldier when he ran into Army Sgt. Patrick Johnson. Goble, a Gadsden, Ala., native, calls himself a young lieutenant, but maintains that he is an old soldier. He spent 13 years of his 15-year military career as an enlisted medic and drill sergeant.
"Of the 4,000 medics I trained, I have run into four while on active duty," he said. One is Johnson, now a medic assigned to Alpha Company of the of the Massachusetts Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 181st Infantry Battalion, the unit that serves as the provincial reconstruction team's security force. Johnson, a Worcester, Mass., native who is a fire fighter with the Worcester Fire Department in his civilian life, first met Goble in 2005 when Goble was the senior drill sergeant for Foxtrot Company, 232nd Medical Battalion, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Six years later, while Goble was reviewing the roster of incoming security soldiers in preparation for the team's pre-deployment training at Camp Atterbury, Ind., he stopped at a familiar name and went to seek out his former trainee. When his former drill sergeant introduced himself, Johnson did not recognize him at first. "He approached me and was smiling as he shook my hand," Johnson said. "The name was familiar, but the rank was throwing me off. He was a staff sergeant when I knew him." "I said, 'Patrick Johnson, Foxtrot Falcon [the name of his training company] right?' as I shook his hand," Goble said. "He was shocked to see that I was an officer." "I called my mom later that night," Johnson said, "because it was such a trip seeing him like that." Johnson recalled his former drill sergeant as always fair and well-respected. "You never knew what he was thinking," Johnson said. "It's absurd comparing how laid back he is now to how intense he was then. He was unmistakably a drill sergeant." While Goble's role has changed since his transition to the officer ranks, he said he still is an old medic at heart. "Part of me always remembers him in a medical sense," Johnson said. "He still mentors me today, ... and I still go to him for guidance and advice." Goble, for his part, is more than comfortable with his former trainee operating on his own. "If, God forbid, I was laying hurt, bleeding on the side of the road somewhere, I would want to look up and see Doc Johnson coming to help me," Goble said. "He is really showing the standard of excellence he learned as a Foxtrot Falcon, and I am proud to serve with him." (Issued on May 9, 2011) | ||
| Related Sites: NATO International Security Assistance Force | ||
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011
First Lady Invites Guard, Reserve Kids to Fitness Event
By Elaine Sanchez American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 10, 2011 - Alongside about 80 children of National Guardsman and reservists, First Lady Michelle Obama showed off her dance moves and football-handling prowess yesterday during a "Let's Move" fitness and nutrition event for military families on the White House's South Lawn.
But before she got moving, the first lady first took time to spotlight two of her "top priorities" -- kids' health and wellness and military families. Military families, she noted in brief opening remarks, "are truly the force behind the force." Over this past decade, she said, the nation has relied on its servicemembers and their families more than ever before. "You might not be in uniform, but we all know that all of you make the same, if not more, of the sacrifice," she told the families in attendance. "We know that when our troops serve, you all serve. It's time we started doing everything as a country that we can do to show our gratitude for your contributions to this nation." That intent, she said, is what drove her and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, to start the "Joining Forces" military family support campaign. This national initiative calls on all sectors of society -- from citizens and communities, to businesses and nonprofit groups -- to support military families. "It's an effort to rally the entire country -- every American -- to recognize, honor and support all of our military families," she said. "It is incumbent upon all of us to step up in some way to make sure these families know that we're proud of them." As part of this initiative, the first lady unveiled three new "Let's Move" commitments specifically designed for military kids and teens. Members of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition have committed to doing a special series of events and outreach with military families across the country, Obama said, citing a few upcoming examples. Championship NASCAR driver Carl Edwards will visit military bases in connection with his weekly races, and former New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi, along with a team of wounded warriors, will start climbing Mount Kilimanjaro today. Additionally, the International Health, Racquet and Sports Club Association will offer free memberships to immediate family members of actively deployed National Guard and Reserve members, she said. Starting June 1, people can log onto the Let's Move website at http://letsmove.gov to find a club in their area and sign up for free. Also for these families, the American Council on Exercise has agreed to provide at least 1 million hours of free personal training and fitness instruction. Obama pointed out her own personal trainer in the crowd, noting that he's the one responsible for her famously toned arms. Obama encouraged military families to visit the Let's Move website to learn more about these initiatives. | ||
| Related Sites: Special Report: Joining Forces | ||
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City Lad Stars in Delhi Choir
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| The Capital City Minstrels performing at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi – inset Yudhishtar Singh Bedi. |
A Ludhiana lad – Yudhishtar Singh Bedi – starred in the prestigious “The Capital City Minstrels “ (CCM), North India’s best known choir in New Delhi recently . The group gave a scintillating performance at the Hungarian Art Centre , The India Habitat Centre and the Gurgaon Epicentre Cultural Centre to a packed audience .
The Capital City Minstrels comprises people from all walks of life - professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects, teachers, corporate executives and embassy personnel, of all ages and nationalities, from all the five continents, as diverse as French, German, South American, African, Chinese, Korean, Australian and Indian, all with one thing in common – their love of music. CCM’s repertoire spans a wide range; from the earliest choral music to the entire spectrum of western classical music, and opera to ballads, folk songs, Broadway musicals, rock, pop, jazz as well as Indian music arranged for choir performance.
CCM has performed more than 100 concerts since the early 1990’s at prestigious venues all over India . CCM as the choral group is known, believes that there is more to singing in harmony than simply hitting the right notes at the right time. This notion of harmony is evident in the coming together of people of different ages, from different parts of the country and, indeed, from different countries. Various professionals from different walks of life are part of CCM, with sundry races and religions coming together to blend their voices in song, in many languages. Zohra Shaw, Fellow of Trinity College of Music, London, founded this choir eleven years ago - in 1994. It is now headed by a talented group including Maxwell Pereira – ex Chief Commissioner of Police of New Delhi . The composer is the talented Russian Nadya V Balyan. Mr Pereira has promised to hold a performance in Punjab soon.
Yudhishtar - a young BioTechnology scientist from Ludhiana – has joined this group recently and has impressed Ms Nadya with his talent . He is the youngest member of this prestigious select group . His parents are doctors in the Christian Medical College and Hospital Ludhiana (Dr Harinder Singh Bedi and Dr Nandini Bedi – Cardiac and Paediatric Surgeons respectively) . Yudhishtar has been selected at the prestigious University of California in USA - he will be continuing his passion for music there along with his research . Mr Pereira believes that music has a strong binding and healing touch in this chaotic era and believes in encouraging the youngsters to get involved in music actively. Shalu Arora and Rector Kathuria
Monday, May 09, 2011
Appeal for Twinkle...Please come one come all....!
6yr old Twinkle (Hospital Number: C7313514) presented with a large swelling on her neck for the last 2 months. She was admitted 1 week ago and lymph node biopsy revealed Hodgkins Lymphoma (a type of blood cancer). This is a curable type of cancer with appropriate treatment with ABVD chemotherapy.
Her father is a daily wage labourer with 4 children who earns less than Rs 2500/- per month. The estimated expenditure of the treatment is approximately Rs. 1, 00,000/- over 6 (six) months.
This is to request the well wishers to come forward to help this girl. You may please contact Clinical Haematology, Haemato-Oncology & Bone Marrow (Stem Cell) Transplant Unit, CMC, Ludhiana. Phone number: 0161-5037957, email: cmcbmt@gmail.com.
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Bin Laden Stil Played Active Role in al-Qaida
 American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 7, 2011 - Five video clips released to reporters today at the Pentagon show that Osama bin Laden was still an "active player" in al-Qaida operations, a senior intelligence official said. Since bin Laden's May 1 death at the hands of American forces inside his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a multi-agency task force has worked around the clock to sift through "the most significant amount of intelligence ever collected from a senior terrorist," the official said. "Materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al-Qaida," he added, "providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group." From digital audio and video files, and from printed materials, computer equipment, recording devices and handwritten documents, analysts are learning that "bin Laden continued to direct even tactical details of the group's management and to encourage plotting," he said. In a statement released today, CIA Director Leon Panetta said, "The material found in the compound only further confirms how important it was to go after bin Laden." Panetta added that, "Since 9/11, this is what the American people have expected of us. In this critical operation, we delivered." A CIA-led multiagency task force is triaging, cataloging and analyzing the materials, drawing on expertise from the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the National Media Exploitation Center, the National Counterterrorism Center, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Treasury Department. In a compound the senior intelligence official characterized as "an active command-and-control center for al-Qaida's top leader," bin Laden focused on inspiring and engineering international terrorism and on attacking the United States, especially transportation and infrastructure targets, the official said. "The materials have already provided us some important insights and we expect to learn more about al-Qaida and its affiliates, their plans and intentions, and any threats they currently pose," he said. The five short videos released today all show the al-Qaida leader delivering messages to his audience, but in these versions the sound has been removed. "It would be inappropriate to spread the words of terrorists and their propaganda messages," the official said, "especially Osama bin Laden's." The first video is a complete but unreleased message by bin Laden to the American people, produced sometime between Oct. 9 and Nov. 5, 2010, the official said. In the video bin Laden has trimmed and dyed black his normally gray beard. His message condemns U.S. policy and denigrates capitalism, the official said. The second video shows a gray-bearded bin Laden in a room, watching live or taped video clips of himself, possibly from news outlets, on a television. The intelligence official said the date of the video can't yet be determined, but he noted that bin Laden's beard was gray at the time of his death. "In this video he has not dyed or trimmed his beard," the intelligence official said, "suggesting that this practice was one he reserved for films he planned to distribute." Bin Laden, the official noted, "jealously guarded his image." The final three short clips show brief video rehearsal sessions of a black-bearded bin Laden. "The collection is large and is proving valuable, and it will take time to go through it," he said. "But we are already disseminating intelligence across the U.S. government based on what we've found." Bin Laden's identity was confirmed in several ways, the official said. A woman in the compound identified him to the assault team as Osama bin Laden, and CIA specialists compared photos of the body and of bin Laden, using facial recognition methods that match points of similarity of unique facial features, including the size and shape of a persons eyes, ears and nose. With this method, the official said, "we were able to determine with 95 percent certainty that the body was his." DNA analysis conducted separately by Defense Department and CIA labs positively identified Osama bin Laden, he added, as did DNA samples collected from bin Laden's body and compared to a comprehensive DNA profile derived from bin Laden's large extended family. Al-Qaida released its own statement May 6 acknowledging bin Laden's death. It is noteworthy, the official said, "that the group did not announce a new leader, suggesting it is still trying to deal with bin Laden's demise." So far, the senior intelligence official said, there is no indication that Pakistan's government was aware that bin Laden was at this compound in Abbottabad. "We're asking some questions, and the Pakistanis themselves have said that they're asking questions of themselves," he added, noting that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is important and complicated. "It's important that we find ways in the future to work together, especially on the counterterrorism front," he said. "This is a common fight," the official added. "Bin Laden is responsible for supporting operations that have killed scores of Pakistanis as well, so there is a mutual interest in us working together." Going forward, he said, "we need to find ways to solidify that relationship." (Editor's Note: The released videos are available for download in the transcript link below.) |
| Related Sites: Transcript: Background Briefing with Senior Intelligence Official at the Pentagon on Intelligence Aspects of the U.S. Operation Involving Osama Bin Laden Special Report: The Demise of Osama bin Laden Related Articles: Bin Laden's Death May Impact Afghanistan, Gates Says |
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