January 6, 2011: Many civilians are well aware of how realistic computer games can be in depicting the real world, including the chaos and violence of combat. The American military has long been using this technology for training games. But the army has taken it a little further, by combining several different computerized combat simulations with live training. This is rarely done with commercial games.

A typical situation would have a headquarters using a map based computer sim, showing friendly and enemy (as best intel can determine) locations, along with databases showing what shape units are in. Sounds like a computer wargame? Well, that's how the army rolls these days, whether training or running a battle.

Meanwhile, there could be a battalion or two of real troops out there, reporting back so their location and status could be manually updated in the commander's simulation. In addition, aircraft (attack and transport helicopters) could be operated by individual pilots using flight simulators. The army has "bridge" software to allow different simulators to share information. In this case, the flight simulators would report to the strategic sim location and status.