(NewsNation) — 路易斯安那州西部的福尔克堡是士兵们去“演习战争”的地方。这里是联合就绪训练中心（JRTC）所在地，部队在此为战斗做准备，尤其是在部署之前。陆军作战训练中心的目标是复制真实世界的战争，而这越来越意味着要为由无人机和人工智能塑造的冲突做准备。退伍军人布赖恩·皮肯斯曾14次参加阿富汗和伊拉克的战斗部署，并在美国特种作战部队服役超过20年，他说美国有很多追赶的工作要做。
(NewsNation) — Fort Polk in western Louisiana is where soldiers go to “play war.”It’s home to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC), where troops prepare for combat, especially before deploying. The goal of the Army's combat training centers is to replicate real-world warfare, and that increasingly means preparing for conflict shaped by drones and artificial intelligence. Bryan Pickens, a veteran who served 14 combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq and has more than 20 years of military service in U.S. Special Operations, said the U.S. has a lot of catching up to do.
“我经常说我们像在划划子船，而我们的敌人却在喷气式摩托艇上逃离我们，”皮肯斯说。“反恐全球战争的技能让我们做好了对抗泥土农民的准备。而不是我们的同级敌人。”皮肯斯还曾支持乌克兰当前对俄罗斯的战争努力，如今他专注于训练美国和北约部队应对当代战争，并推动军队现代化。五角大楼宣布成立一个新的自主战争司令部，由一名四星上将领导，以在军队内推广人工智能、机器人和低成本无人机能力。
“I often say we are on a rowboat while our enemies are escaping us on a jet ski,” Pickens said. “The Global War on Terror skills prepared us to fight dirt farmers. Not our peer enemies.”Having also supported Ukraine’s current war effort against Russia, Pickens now focuses on training U.S. and NATO forces on current warfare and modernizing the force. The Pentagon announced a new Autonomous Warfare Command, led by a four-star general to scale AI, robotics and low-cost drone capabilities across the military.
NewsNation独家获悉，这一推动的另一个目标是为陆军推出一个集成技术系统，该系统能够跨不同制造商的设备运行，旨在加快训练速度并降低成本。这一系统的首个测试场地是JRTC，与专注于自主地面系统的国防科技公司Forterra合作，该公司正在扩大其服务美国军队的能力。为了模拟真实战斗，第1营第509步兵团（绰号“杰罗尼莫”）作为驻地对抗部队，扮演敌人角色，对抗每个轮训通过该训练中心的旅。
NewsNation has learned exclusively that another goal of that push is the launch of an integrated technology system for the Army that works across equipment from different manufacturers and is designed to speed up training and cut costs. The first testing ground for this is the JRTC in partnership with Forterra, a defense tech company focused on autonomous ground systems that is now expanding how it can serve the U.S. military. To simulate realistic combat, the 1st Battalion, 509th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed Geronimo, serves as the resident opposing force and plays the enemy against every brigade that rotates through the training center.
福尔克堡进步委员会主席洛根·莫里斯表示，杰罗尼莫部队的士兵被配备了能够模拟美国敌人所拥有或预计将拥有的工具，包括无人机、通信设备和情报信息。
Soldiers in Geronimo are given tools that mimic what enemies of the U.S. have or are expected to have, including drones, communications and intelligence information, said Logan Morris, chairman of Fort Polk Progress.
莫里斯还是前陆军部长文职助理。应对各类自主敌方武器系统，无论它们来自俄罗斯、伊朗、中国还是其他地方，都意味着军方需要运行在各个单独平台上的不同技术。士兵随后必须学会如何使用每个平台并单独处理数据，然后才能将所有数据整合在一起，这需要时间和金钱。新系统旨在减少这两者。
Morris is also a former civilian aide to the secretary of the Army. Dealing with a variety of autonomous enemy weapons systems, whether they’re coming from Russia, Iran, China or elsewhere, means the military needs different technologies that run on individual platforms. Soldiers then must learn how to use each platform and process the data separately before it all gets integrated, something that takes time and money. The new system aims to reduce both.
福特拉增长、维持和塑造行动负责人菲尔·科特说：“杰罗尼莫擅长的是让这些来到[波尔克堡]的部队感到困惑。他们不应该还要背负学习50种不同系统、50种不同电池充电器、50种不同手持控制器和射程限制的负担”，以成功重现敌方可能采取的行动。
Phil Cotter, Forterra’s head of growth, sustainment and shaping operations, said, “What Geronimo is good at is flummoxing these units that come down [to Fort Polk]. They shouldn't have to also be burdened with trying to learn 50 different systems, 50 different battery chargers, 50 different handheld controllers and range limitations” to successfully recreate what the enemy may do.
该平台被称为OASIS-Fabric和OneLink，它从一系列通信技术和其他平台汲取信息并大规模处理。“它们是中间件和数据层，某种程度上让这些系统都能说同一种语言，”科特解释道。
The platform, known as OASIS-Fabric and OneLink, pulls in information from a range of communications technologies and other platforms and processes it at scale. “They are the middleware and data layer that kind of allow these systems to all speak the same language,” Cotter explains.
福特拉首席增长官斯科特·桑德斯说，目标是让战场上疲惫、紧张的18岁士兵能够在不等待上级指挥部的情况下规划任务。这名士兵“应该能够就在那里完成所有任务自主规划，而不必回溯到上级指挥部去做……你可以降低成本、增强互操作性，并提高战术前沿决策的速度，”他说。
Scott Sanders, Forterra's chief growth officer, said the goal is for a tired, stressed 18-year-old on the battlefield to be able to plan a mission without waiting on higher headquarters. The soldier “should be able to do all the mission autonomy planning right there without having to reach back to higher headquarters to do it … you can reduce cost, enhance interoperability, and increase the speed at which decisions get made at tactical edge," he said.
莫里斯指出，目标不仅是将这种能力提供给杰罗尼莫，还要提供给那些前去训练的营，即所谓的“好人”。他补充说，它之所以脱颖而出，是因为它“整合并评估来自其他公司、供应商和承包商的能力”，而不是相互干扰。这将让其他防务公司的平台作为一个更大的系统协同工作。
Morris noted the goal is not just to give this capability to Geronimo but also to those battalions who go down to train, aka the “good guys.”He added that it stands out because it "integrates and evaluates capabilities from other companies, vendors and contractors,” rather than interfering with each other. That would let other defense companies' platforms work together as one larger system.
如果该系统证明成功，计划是将其推广到陆军的所有训练中心，最终用于作战行动。格罗尼莫指挥官特雷弗·琼斯上校写道，陆军需要改变其训练和作战方式，通过“快速失败”来学习哪些有效、哪些无效。“随着技术变革的当前步伐，被竞争对手军队的转型所超越的风险非常真实，”琼斯说。福特拉承认，这个新平台能否完美运行没有保证，当然也不会立刻见效。
If the system proves successful, the plan is to bring it to all of the Army's training centers and eventually to combat operations. Lt. Col. Trevor Jones, commander of Geronimo, wrote that the Army needs to change how it trains and fights, learning what works and what doesn’t by “failing fast.”“The risk of being outclassed by a rival military’s transformation is very real with the current pace of technological change," Jones said. Forterra acknowledges there’s no guarantee this new platform will work perfectly, and certainly not right away.
但琼斯主张进行实验的论点是，如果美国军队不尝试新的作战方式，它将比那些在此领域进行创新并已占据先机的敌人落得更远。这项新技术已经在一定程度上经过测试。过去一年里，福特拉向东欧派遣了105辆自动驾驶车辆，以协助乌克兰作战。科特表示，这些车辆所使用的一些底层技术，并且在战场上经过改进，正是格罗尼莫将要接收的技术的一部分。
But Jones’ argument for experimentation is that if the U.S. military doesn’t try new ways of operating, it will fall even farther behind its enemies who are innovating in this space and have a head start. This new technology has been tested to some degree. In the past year, Forterra has sent 105 autonomous vehicles to Eastern Europe to facilitate Ukraine’s fight. Cotter says some of the underlying technology used in those vehicles, and that’s been improved upon in battle, is some of the same tech that undergirds what Geronimo will be receiving.
桑德斯指出，他们在乌克兰成功测试了该系统，因此他们说：“我们说，‘让我们逐步向美国军队推广这一系统，一次一个训练中心。’”当被问及进入其平台的数据有多安全，以及是否存在被美国敌人获取的风险时，科特表示，他们具备缓解这种风险的能力，因为他们“熟悉如何处理政府数据，并且不会让这些数据面临对手的威胁。”
Sanders noted they successfully tested out the system in Ukraine and because of that, “We said, ‘Let's roll this out broadly to the U.S. military, one training center at a time.’" When asked how secure the data coming into their platform will be and whether there’s a risk for it to get in the hands of America’s enemies, Cotter says they are equipped to mitigate that because they’re “familiar with how to handle government data and not put any of that at risk to adversaries.”
他还指出，福特拉拥有国防部首个有案可查的主要地面自主权项目，这意味着它已经通过了授权运行的流程。时间将告诉我们需要填补哪些漏洞以及需要采取哪些其他预防措施。目前，这个平台看来是向作战准备迈出的一步。众议员迈克·辛普森（共和党-爱达荷州）表示：“我们不能让对手领先于我们，如果我们不尽快赶上，他们就会领先于我们。”但辛普森补充说，他“很兴奋，因为我们可以利用新技术保护我们的战争人员”。
He also points to the fact that Forterra has the first major ground autonomy program of record for the Defense Department, which means it has already gone through an Authority to Operate process. Time will tell what gaps need to be filled and what other precautions need to be taken. For now, this platform appears to be a step toward warfare readiness. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) says, “We can't let our adversaries get ahead of us, and they are ahead of us if we don't catch up real fast." But, Simpson added, he’s “excited that we can protect our war fighters” with new technology.