Mounted Warfare TestBed

Mounted Warfare TestBed (MWTB) at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was the premier site for distributed simulation experiments in the US Army for over 20 years.

The first MWTB site manager, Dick Garvey, established a strong focus on measurement of battlefield effects from Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) simulation.

With an enthusiastic embrace of technical innovation and a lean management style, the site carried Garvey's initial philosophy to establish many of the concepts and techniques for experimentation using distributed simulation.

The most important early user of the MWTB was the Combat Vehicle Command and Control (CVCC) series of experiments by Army Research Institute that examined various aspects of the proposed upgrades to the M1A1 tank, including computerized navigation and digital command-and-control.

By demonstrating a verified, validated and accredited DIS capability, A2ATD established the foundation for subsequent activities at the MWTB and at all of the other Battle Labs.

[17] The RUX06 was a true LVC event, combining manned simulators, a force wraparound generated in constructive simulation with actual vehicles fitted with emulators of future C2 technologies on the ranges at Ft. Knox in real-time; this experiment examined workload and stress of crews of future manned vehicles under varied threat conditions.

The Complex Web Defense Experiment examined the effectiveness of systems and tactics of a force composed of a Combined Arms Bn (CAB), one Stryker Infantry Battalion, Force Design Update (FDU) Reconnaissance Squadron, supported by appropriate joint and army enablers against a predominantly dismounted enemy that was embedded in a semi-urban environment.

The tactical network it supported used experimental DIS PDUs for the blue and red Common Operating Picture (COP).

Multiple SA Servers could be configured in a multi-cell arrangement to use communications effects as defined by a comms model like ALCES or QualNet.

The Tech Control was a collection of tools that monitored a widely distributed simulation to ensure that configuration management and network performance standards were met.

The data were written to flat files or directly to a Relational Database where they were further processed and analyzed to produce charts, graphs, tables, spreadsheets and presentations for the use of Army Operations Research / Systems Analysts (ORSAs).

It was based on the ACRT technology, and was used at the MWTB for experiments that examine future weapon systems and tactics and for evaluating soldier behavior.