Air Force Unveils Potential Plans for MyBase Virtual World

Air Education and Training Command released a white paper yesterday detailing plans for revamping the Air Force's education system from 2008 to 2030. The core of the new framework is MyBase, a virtual education system aimed at the public as well as recruits and career airmen. In one aspect, it's used as a virtual environment for collaboration across institutions as well as service training. "The young men and women who will lead our Air Force in the future have been living in a digital world their entire lives and are better prepared than any other generation to operate in this environment," said Gen. William R. Looney III, AETC commander. "It is imperative that we understand their needs and expectations, and develop an enterprise-wide system that fosters learning and captures their most critical asset -- knowledge."

The 29-page white paper details a broad array of potential learning changes and the basis for changing to an "Air Force 2.0" model. As the Air Force looks to its next wave of recruits, it's trying to adapt to the Millenials (born between 1980 and 2001). Described as Digital Natives the Air Force breaks them their key characteristics as "quest for physical security and safety, patriotism, heightened fears, acceptance of change, technically-savvy, environmental issues."

Problematically, the report notes that only 27% of American youth qualify for the Air Force today, making adapting to the Millenials' needs all the more important.

Likewise, as technology continues to progress, the white paper asks how the Air Force will keep up. If you start browsing Lexis Nexis results for "virtual worlds" the first instances that crop up with any regularity are either mainstream profiles of Jaron Lanier or in-depth tech wonk stories on the Air Force's simulations.

But the white paper identifies a need to go beyond training pilots to fly well and to "do this by recruiting and developing Airmen with agile minds, capable of leveraging Air Force knowledge to accomplish the mission. They will provide a hedge against the vagaries of an uncertain and rapidly changing future threat environment. The Air Force needs to dramatically improve its ability to operate in the cognitive domain and increasing the intellectual capital of Airmen will be critical to the effort."

That's especially true as enemies become more and more technologically adept. The questions isn't simply training, but providing "knowledge management, continuous learning, and precision learning."

One way to do that is to provide more alternatives: " Distance learning will evolve from basic enrollment in computer and web-based  courses to virtual learning environments that support online collaboration and classes taught by both live and virtual instructors." MyBase is one possible solution: " a virtual, exploratory and interactive environment and architecture that supports both continuous and precision learning."

Through avatars tied to personnel management systems (meaning they can go up in rank), airmen will participate in classrooms, and "Using haptic technology [...] manipulate virtual objects and add the sense of touch to the visual cues obtained in virtual environments," opening up the possibility for kinetic training in medicine, flying, and maintenance. 

And due to the use of social networking currently, the Air Force predicts that new airmen will adapt to the environments quickly and easily.

Attached at the end of the white paper is a series of three vignettes, detailing narrative form how MyBase will operate for each sector: recruiting to and inspiring the public after a recent terrorist attack with games as well as social settings; training new cadets in a virtual Squadron Officer School (vSOS) with avatars  of famous historical thinkers, guest lectures at the University of Texas, and full-blown simulation of what it's like to watch an air mission from the ground in an Army M1A2 Abram; and, finally, using avatars as interaction methods for research about security issues and further training.

Very sci-fi, very exciting.

[Summary and link to full white paper here.]

Comments

[Tele3DWorld]

Nice to see some visionary thinking.

[Can't help it]

But...

All your base are belong to us!

[Jo Mackie]

Gimmick much? Can't get it together with simpler methods, herding the cats, or cutting edge simple thinking - let's throw in some 3D...

The vision of what works, what is good, and what gets the job done is out there - I strongly believe that this is not it.

The best systems help people get their jobs done, receive their training, and perform at their peak without people noticing that there is even a system there.

Hope I'm wrong - there are simpler methods... Most of which could have been implemented a long time ago if the organization (like most organizations) wasn't so dang stovepiped. Ruthless leadership and simple solutions <<< try that first.