August 2, 2006: Without much fanfare or notice, the training of infantry officers has been vastly improved over the last decade because of some tweaks to a two decade old training system. Infantry training was revolutionized twenty years ago when the U.S. Army introduced MILES (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System). Basically, MILES is laser tag. Each rifle and machine-gun is equipped with a laser light device. When the soldier pulls the trigger, the gun still goes "bang" (blanks are used). But a coded laser light also goes downrange as well. If another soldier is in the way, his laser light detectors will sense the shooters laser and the soldier in question will hear a buzzer go off, indicating he is hit. The range of the lasers for rifles, machine-gun, anti-tank missiles and tank guns are all set realistically, as is the damage they cause. Thus a rifle can't take out a tank.
All this revolutionized infantry training, because now new troops quickly learned to take cover. Instructors with combat experience have always struggled to get this extremely important point across to their trainees. With MILES, the point was made quickly. The troops were young and competitive and didn't like getting "shot." They soon became very adept at moving around without giving the other guy a clear shot. As Iraqi and Afghan gunmen quickly discovered, this was a deadly advantage for the guy who had it.
MILES made the troops expert enough to train regularly with live ammunition. With MILES, the infantry learned how to use their weapons without shooting each other. In all earlier wars, you didn't want to be near green troops in their first battle. Such inexperienced troops tended to fire haphazardly, often hitting each other. MILES cured infantry of that habit, without using real ammo. The value of MILES was seen in the 1991 Gulf War, and that led to more training with live ammunition, and even better prepared troops when the war on terror and Iraq came along.
But between the 1991 war and 2001, improvements were made to MILES. One of the most important was the addition of GPS, and the ability to record the movement and activity of troops during their training. This made possible instant replay, and immediate after-action reviews of how the troop leaders did. The training staff could say anything from, "good job" to "what the hell were you thinking?" While these sessions were often embarrassing, NCOs and officers who later saw combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, admitted that they were glad to have made their mistakes earlier, using MILES, than later, against an armed enemy.
It only takes a few truckloads of MILES gear, communications equipment and computers to set up a battalion for this kind of training. Unlike the old (pre-MILES) days, when training was artificial and, frankly, boring, the new version is much more realistic, and, for the troops, both competitive and eventually life-saving.