Dstl Partners With Slitherine To Develop Decision Support Tools

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) of the UK has partnered with wargame developer Slitherine from Epsom to utilize military simulation video games to develop military decision support tools. The contract is said to be worth up to £1.5m and expands over the course of two years.

The tools which were originally developed to be for commercial games will now let users simulate war scenarios on many different scales. They can receive input from existing simulators, so militaries will be able to incorporate more advanced smaller scale simulators with a larger battlefield picture. This will let flight simulators control fighter jets in the software instead of AI.

These tools also can export data from scenarios. Then, military officers can analyze the data for future decision making improvement.

Currently, Slitherine’s games are being used by defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or BAE Systems, and the armed forces of many countries like the US, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, and more. Dstl selected Slitherine because they are easy to access. The games’ commercial nature makes them quite easy to use, unlike bespoke military tools which often need training.

He added that Dstl will use these tools with their data and scenarios to provide better ways of visualizing military problems. The benefits include accessibility, ease of use as well as the number of existing users.

However, these tools can’t be used for everything. Dstl's simulation modeling, or more traditional manual wargaming, still plays a vital part.

At first, Dstl used these tools with the Royal Navy. This led to one of the games is being tested for educational purposes. Now the United States Department of Defense (DoD) is using these games for loitering times, fuel consumption and wargaming simulations.

To meet the needs of the Armed Forces of the UK, Dstl is currently enhancing 3 games: Flashpoint Campaigns, Combat Missions, and Command.