Soldiers to train in battlegrounds with moveable walls

MOVEABLE walls will be used to train soldiers to hunt enemies to stop them memorising familiar layouts of buildings too quickly.

Currently, if the Army wants to carry out an exercise where soldiers need to track down targets in an urban area, they will typically travel to a different military base where they will use an empty building on site to simulate the attack. However, researchers found that after a couple of attempts the soldiers tend to remember the footprint of the building, rendering the exercise less effective.

4GD, a company set up by two former Royal Marines, gave themselves the task of reimagining immersive close combat training through creating moveable walls to build vessels that represent terrorist safe houses and other battlefield scenarios.

The result, a “smart facility” training battleground, was created and tested in Colchester with 16 Air Assault Brigade and their elite paratroopers, this year.

Made out of PVC, the buildings are comprised of panels that can be reconfigured by instructors within seconds so that soldiers can be placed in numerous settings to disorientate and test their stress levels, making it impossible to learn the building’s footprint.

They also use special effects from lights, to smoke, pyrotechnics and highdefinition sounds which are operated from a tablet by the commanders. The shape of walls can be changed to resemble certain types of buildings, preparing soldiers for specific environments.

The Army has been so impressed with the facility that it has ordered three more to be installed at different barracks, the first of which will go to Catterick next year.

James Crowley, an ex-marine who is the business development director of the company, said: “The Field Army sees the value of what has been built in Colchester. They know that soldiering is a degradable skill and if they are only getting the chance to practice these scenarios once a year it’s hardly going to keep them at high readiness. Now they can maintain competence all year. You have to keep doing it to be better.”

Mr Crowley cited the recent Integrated Review which pledged to move to high “readiness and relevance for confronting the threats of the future” as he said the facility complimented this mindset.