Warfighter Podcast Warfighter Digital

Strap in. For our penultimate episode of the season we tackle what might seem like a simple question, but proves to be expansive - What does it mean to deliver realism in Training? 
We are joined by Anthony Pittman who, as well having a lengthy service in the British Army where he lived and breathed training, is currently the Director for Development & Optimisation at Babcock.
Always a contentious subject, (which we’re sure is the start of some mess brawls), we don’t hold back from the difficult questions. Anthony deals with each point elegantly, tackling diverse subjects such as:
What is Realism anyway?Is there an optimum level for Realism?Could we cope with greater Realism?Doesn’t adding Realism always cost more money?Do we have enough scientific rigour to understand training effectiveness vs Realism?
We knew 40 minutes wouldn’t be enough for this subject, so no doubt we will return to it in the future. Anthony wraps up the discussion with his vision for what improved realism means for the future of collective training.
Excellent food for thought and very topical with all the work going on in this area at the moment.
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guest:Anthony Pittman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajpittman/
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock International GroupBabcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.
Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

We’re coming back to our favourite topic - how do we get innovative ideas off the ground and into the market for exploitation by the frontline. In past episodes we’ve discussed the ‘Valley of Death’ and the challenge described in the book ‘Crossing the Chasm’.
This episode we speak to Owen Thompson, who deals with this every day in his role as CEO at Cambridge Future Tech - a Venture Builder that works with deep-tech startups across diverse markets. Owen has had two successful careers to date: Firstly as a Typhoon pilot for the Royal Air Force and then appointed to senior positions in a leading defence prime when he left the forces.. So he brings a unique perspective for defence centric technologies.
The capital markets for startups have historically been slightly allergic to funding defence startups, but with the realisation that sustainability is closely related to security, attitudes are changing. We see this with investments in companies like Palantir and Anduril which have the potential to create huge change in the Defence industry.
In what becomes a wide ranging discussion, Owen talks about his experience with new technology startups trying to make a difference in Defence, how they met these challenges and potential routes for funding and getting innovation to the users through the commercial maze that government procurement often is.
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guests:Owen Thompson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/o-thompson/
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock InternationalBabcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.
Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better...

This week the Warfighter Podcast takes a small tangent - it’s not all running around with a dagger between our teeth. We are pleased to welcome Sae Schatz, who has an extremely diverse career so far, formerly serving as the Director of the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative, a published author and expert in learning sciences.
Before joining the civil service in 2015, Sae worked as an applied human–systems scientist, with an emphasis on human cognition and learning, instructional technologies, adaptive systems, human performance assessment, and modelling and simulation.
Whilst we’ve discussed platforms previously, this episode it’s all about the learning ecosystem - how we can start to develop it and foster improved collaboration across learning communities.
Sae offers a challenging vision for what might be possible, demonstrating a number of areas which are yet to be fully exploited across the learning community. Not just a theorist, she leaves us with some practical examples of how we start to develop this vision, with a discussion around the common challenges for organisations and how we need to think differently about how individuals learn most effectively.
Plenty of food for thought and some very relevant points for many of our listeners. Thanks for coming on the podcast Sae!
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guests:Sae Schatz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saeschatz
IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC): https://sagroups.ieee.org/ltscIEEE ICICLE (Learning Engineering): https://www.ieeeicicle.orgModernizing Learning book: https://adlnet.gov/publications/2019/04/modernizing-learningEngines of Engagement book: https://bit.ly/EnginesOfEngagement
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock International Babcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our...

Yet another guest that we’ve been dying to get on since last season. We are pleased to welcome Ethan to the podcast to talk about the work he’s been involved in to understand and model the ‘grey zone’ in modern warfare. Ethan previously served as an Intel Analyst with the US Navy, and now works for Plexsys Interface Products, supporting the simulation and modelling of complex environments.
Defined as ‘activities by a state that are harmful to another state and are sometimes considered to be acts of war, but are not legally acts of war’, this subject proves to be both fascinating and broad ranging.
We start by discussing the challenge of conducting multi-domain training, especially the space components and the exponential nature of the problem, which in turn presents computational and processing challenges.
The discussion turns to the rapidly evolving nature of warfare, with most recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, especially the prevalence of low cost drones and persistent surveillance.
While we don’t come to any firm conclusions, the discussion proves how much we have yet to do, and how quickly we might need to develop training systems in the near future to prepare for these emerging threats.
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guests:Ethan Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanwwilson/
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock InternationalBabcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.
Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

On a subject we’ve wanted to cover for a while, we are pleased to welcome Andy Gales, who kindly agreed to come and give us all the details about the British Army’s Tactical Engagement System. Which isn’t a single system at all, but several systems integrated together to deliver critical Instrumented Live training for the British Army.
Andy has lengthy experience with the various flavours of TES, from his time in the British Army, as well with his current company Cubic Defence, which supports key elements of the in-service capability today.
A huge subject, that’s much more complex than it might first appear. But Andy does a great job taking us through the early evolution of the technology, the benefits and limitations of laser based systems, the impact of synthetic wrap and new ideas such as Roundless TES.
In all a fascinating look into an area that seems simple, but is actually wonderfully complex with many opportunities for future innovation in Land Training.
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guests:Andy Gales: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-gales-1896b32a/
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock InternationalBabcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.
Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better engineering decisions to reduce risk and improve service delivery.

Virtual simulation has been around for a while now, and there has been some great leaps and bounds in its fidelity - mainly through the adoption of commercially available technologies that run on standard (albeit high-end) computer hardware.
One person who was there during the early emergence of these technologies was Pete Morrison - previously CEO and now Chief Commercial Officer at Bohemia Interactive Simulations. During his tenure, BISim was one of the few companies to successfully repurpose an off-the-shelf gaming engine for military applications. Today Virtual Battlespace is deployed with most of the NATO and partner nations for training militaries, as well as numerous military and government organisations globally.
Pete provides a short potted history of the development of COTS gaming (making us all feel old) and how the applications have grown up in the defence industry to deliver some critical training applications.
But where from here? Pete goes on to speak about the development of virtual technologies for test & evaluation, as well as the future in a world of AI driven warfare - where AI presents us with dilemmas, how can simulation help us to de-risk this?
Building an experimental future framework using simulation will require the convergence of a number of existing technologies, to support the development of future combat systems.
Hosts:Tom Constable: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-constable/ Colin Hillier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhillier/
Guests:Pete Morrison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morpj97/
Links:Website: https://www.warfighterpodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/warfighter-digital/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkgiH-cwmyc2I2Iyc8MLYtgTwitter: https://twitter.com/WarfighterPod
Episode Sponsor: Babcock InternationalBabcock has always operated hand in hand with our customers because their mission is our mission. Our people support the British Army by contributing to front-line support, delivering the capability they need, available to them wherever, whenever and however they need it. We ensure the British Army can focus on their missions safely by supporting their vehicles, both armoured and white fleet with skilled engineers and capability backed by long-term through-life engineering expertise.
We enable our defence and emergency services customers to do their job with our technical training programmes. We combine deep understanding and long-term commitment with constructive challenge. An embedded partner, focussed on outcomes. Globally, new defence and resilience equipment programmes and asset modernisation programmes are seeing a resurgence. Training personnel is a critical component to support these programmes.
Whether it’s applying engineering excellence or the latest technology, we combine our expertise with a practical mindset. Alongside our deep engineering experience, digital and data technologies will allow us to better understand, predict and enhance the performance of the assets we manage, make better...