As Navy training requirements progress towards a live, virtual, constructive (LVC) training solution, it will become increasingly important to improve responsiveness and standardize the after-action review (AAR) process across the fleet. Rising training costs, advances in networked warfare, and operational security (OPSEC) concerns require the interoperability of disparate warfare systems. This diverse demand is currently addressed with a variety of training systems from different manufacturers with different objectives and AAR tools. These tools can be time consuming and have peculiar design and integration issues which hinders fleet AAR standardization. The technical approach offered by Aviation Systems Engineering Company, Inc. (ASEC) and our partners Aptima Inc. and Arorae Corp. (ARO) will address this need by researching and creating the Phase I prototype of N-STAR: Navy Standardized After-action Review. N-STAR is a system agnostic, instructor-focused AAR tool that synchronizes distributed notes from the top down achieving standardization in accordance with the Universal Joint Task List (UJTL). This solution design will consider the needs to integrate and be used in the shipboard, aircraft, and submarine live or synthetic training environments providing a near real-time AAR for live and synthetic training events, while maintaining interoperability with the various after-action tools currently in use.
Benefit: Direct benefits of N-STAR are that it increases AAR responsiveness and standardization of single and multi-unit training events in an LVC environment. Future benefits lie in the proposed nature of its design and architecture which will support big-data analytics allowing for trend analysis and recommendations for follow-on LVC events. N-STAR has the potential for use throughout commercial, federal and defense markets. The advantages gained from N-STAR will benefit any distributed training program, where near real-time review aligned with strategic, operational and tactical objectives are vital to enhancing lessons learned and driving improvement during follow on training events. This requirement is seen throughout the DoD training programs of other services, and civilian first responders.
Keywords: Near Real-Time, Near Real-Time, Integration, Live virtual and constructive (LVC), Training, Networked warfare, After-action reviews (AAR), standardization, synthetic
