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Military air operations in the European theater require U.S. and NATO participants to send various mission experts to 10 Combined Air Operations Centers (CAOCs). Little or no training occurs prior to their arrival for tours of duty ranging between 90 days to 3 years. When training does occur, there is little assessment of its effectiveness in raising CAOC mission readiness. A comprehensive training management system has been developed that utilizes traditional and web based distance-learning methods for providing instruction and task practice as well as distributed simulation to provide mission rehearsal training opportunities on demand for the C2 warrior. This system incorporates new technologies, such as voice interaction and virtual tutors, and a Learning Management System (LMS) that tracks trainee progress from academic learning through procedural practice and mission training exercises. Supervisors can monitor their subordinate's progress through synchronous or asynchronous methods. Embedded within this system are virtual tutors, which provide automated performance measurement as well as tutoring. The training system offers a true time management savings for current instructors and training providers that today must perform On the Job Training (OJT) duties before, during and after each event. Many units do not have the resources to support OJT and are forced to maintain an overlap of several days to minimally maintain unit readiness. One CAOC Commander affected by this paradigm has advocated supporting a beta version of this system to test its ability to offer training on-demand and track the progress of its personnel and unit readiness. If successful, aircrew simulation devices can be connected through either Distributed Interactive Simulation or High Level Architecture methods to provide a DMT-C2 air operations training environment in Europe. This paper presents an approach to establishing a training, testing and decision aid capability and means to assess its effectiveness within a comprehensive distributed Mission Training System (MTS).
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