In preparing to defend against threats from adversaries worldwide, the U.S. Army is relying on digital twinning techniques to ensure that service members “train like they fight,” Army Sergeant Major Lonnie Dunbar III said at ManTech’s TechShare 2024 conference in Washington on May 1.
A digital twin functions by digitally replicating a physical asset in the virtual environment, including the physical asset’s functionality, features, and behavior. Systems of sensors can then collect data to provide a real-time digital representation of the physical asset.
“As an enlisted member, my main part is training my soldiers and training them effectively, but it’s hard to do that given the operational environment,” said SGM Dunbar, who is the Senior Enlisted Leader for the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command.
“What digital twins allows us to do is it allows us to train as we will fight using threat models,” he said. “Digital twins really gives [us] an opportunity to see, react … but also to simulate that environment to see how soldiers would react to that,” he added.
SGM Dunbar talked about how he’s taking advantage of digital twinning as part of the Army’s mission to dominate the space domain.
“How do I create experts that can dominate or outpace our adversary with technical expertise but with limited resources? Digital twins help us to … create effective training at scale,” he said.
In addition to taking advantage of digital twinning technologies, SGM Dunbar said it is not only important to apply the correct technologies to the training task, “but also having the right people at the right place at the right time.”
