Army to buy virtual trainers

The Army will buy 28 new virtual firearm training simulators for use at posts around the country from 3D simulation company Digimation, according to an announcement released Wednesday.

The training system consists of a small projector that can be set up almost anywhere and a training rifle that can track soldier movements, Digimation said in the announcement. The company says the system is easy to use and portable, which means more soldiers can be trained more frequently.

“The Army is moving away from large, expensive firearms training systems because they don’t provide the accessibility and throughput of DART and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more,” Digimation President David Avgikos said in the announcement.

The systems are used by more than 300 police departments, the company said.

The Army has in recent months expressed a growing interest in synthetic and virtual training capabilities. In July, the service awarded two prototype contracts to develop the Synthetic Virtual Trainer, which the service said would “increase the quality and quantity of realistic training task repetitions, accelerate and sustain soldier skill target acquisition, and increase soldier lethality and unit readiness.”

The service is working to develop a Synthetic Training Environment, a complex, interconnected training system that can provide training for a wide range of Army missions.