Military Simulators : A Way Forward For The Armed forces

In 2013, a 20 gigabyte huge open world military simulator -“Arma 3” was released.  It was not like it’s popular counterparts like “Call of duty” or “Battlefield”. It had realistic physics, supported massive online communication, had a grid metric based map of the world. Additionally, the effect of gear weight on player movement, checking magazines for bullets remaining, literally providing a accurate flight manual for the helicopters and combat jets and other interesting features interested civilians and veterans alike.

Many YouTube videos featuring a rerun of famous military operations like operation Neptune Spear and Black Hawk down massacre have showed that the simulator could support military vehicles, helicopters and soldiers battling for achieving an objective.

This is a very important tool. A virtual reality version of this , maybe a possibility in future. The army could practise the actual surgical strike with accurate game world resembling the original, the weather matching the forecast, and the expected Pakistani response. The air force could also rehearse the Balakot air strike by connecting flight simulators to the software engine. Since the computer artificial intelligence always takes logical steps, the Pakistani counteroffensive could have been predicted with realistic details of where the counter offense would take place and which combat jets would have higher probability of achieving success.

Hence the armed forces should invest in virtual simulators. They would improve combat effectiveness, give an inexperienced soldier, a preview of what he might expect. Plus, they cost less than actual war games, the enemy is real, at least virtually, and not a cardboard cutout. Also a closed virtual simulation of military operation would ensure secrecy.

It can be used as virtual testing grounds for new weapons, by digitally rendering them into the game world along with their characteristics, and then observing how they operate in different conditions and against variable body armour of enemy.

The armed forces could get an indigenous software company to develop the simulator. This would ensure that whenever they enter combat for real, they have an exact idea of how their enemies would react, where the advantageous terrain is , and which tactics would ensure minimum casualties