Sunday, February 10, 2013
Soldiers flip over realistic training vehicle
The United States Army: Imagine you are a young Soldier strapped into the seat restraints of a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle ready to roll out on a night mission in Afghanistan.
You are ready!
You've got on all your body armor, and your weapon is secured at your side; in all you have 50 to 100 pounds of equipment that you'll need on your objective.
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3 comments:
Training saves lives. When My dad taught me how to drive, one of the first things he did was show me
how to cut my seatbelt and break my window to get out of a vehicle in an emergency. I thought it was weird then, but then I guess we think most Dad stuff is weird at 16. But as an ER surgeon and as a Vet drafted to teach combat surgery to Army medics bound for Vietnam, he knew that just being aware of the possibility of that situation, the worst case scenario, makes all the difference in our ability to act under pressure and survive it. Live fire exercises are dangerous for obvious reasons, and a live training exercise in which your vehicle flips is highly uncontrolable. Depending on who you ask, 20%-30% of American military fatalities in World War Two were in training (http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf). Hopefully programs like these can drastically reduce that number, and anything we can do to improve the chances that a soldier will survive not just the incredible ordeals we ask them to undertake, but the training for those ordeals, is worth every penny in my book. P.S. Is that thing running Navigator?
I agree training saves lives. I just wonder if the training keeps in mind that being trained for something and it actually happening to you. When something actually happens, like your car flipping over, you have to account for adrenaline or if you simple freeze. Its one thing knowing it's training theres no real fear involved. You know you will be fine. It being real is another.
Simulator training has been a big part of 21st century training exercises across a variety of fields and they've had an incredible impact. This takes it to another level and hopefully one that keep more of our men and women safe, having said that, I think a simulator like this would be an asset to civilian grade enforcement and emergency personnel too. I never really knew how to control my vehicle until I was spinning into a ditch at 17 years old during a snowstorm, now, situations like that hardly phase me because I know what to expect...and training stations like this can give our forces the experience they need to deal with them too. Fake or not, we have the technology to make it convincing enough to bring an eighteen year old kid out of that capsule shaking.
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