Sim makes small-arms course more efficient - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Sim makes small-arms course more efficient

At the Marine Corps small-arms repair course in Aberdeen, Md., rifles and mortars don’t last long.

In the hands of unskilled Marines, the weapons suffer constant wear and tear as they are disassembled and rebuilt. Moving parts loosen, threads get stripped, aluminum sections buckle and break.

Instructors say they are lucky to get two years out of them.

“These weapons just weren’t designed to be taken apart over and over,” longtime instructor Gunnery Sgt. James Warrington explained.

Facing costs that start at $23,000 for a year’s worth of M224 60mm mortar-barrel nuts, Warrington and the staff at the Marine detachment, Aberdeen Proving Ground, decided there must be a better way to familiarize Marines with small arms before they get their hands on them.

A lengthy search on the Internet gave them their answer: a computer-based, three-dimensional model of an M224 that could be used in the classroom.

For roughly $5,000, the detachment hired a Vancouver, Canada-based technology company called NGRAIN to build a virtual model of an M224.

The PC-based simulation shows, from the inside out, what a light mortar looks like, how it fires and how it comes apart.

With NGRAIN’s assistance, Warrington even animated the model, ensuring it came apart the way an M224 does.

“This is how this generation learns. We used to draw these on the blackboard or use an overhead projector. They get this more quickly,” Warrington said.

Without the PC-based simulation, students received real mortars early in the training curriculum, and learned hands-on from the beginning. But the combination of inexperience and continual wear and tear wreaked havoc on the equipment, said detachment executive officer Capt. Gerald Habiger.

“Students couldn’t visualize the way these parts worked,” Habiger said. “They would try to put a piece together and end up stripping the threads.”

With the new system, students learn disassembly procedures from the model. Since the simulation is interactive, they can view the parts, rotate the mortar and take it apart on-screen.

Then, they are turned loose on the equipment with a better understanding of what’s inside.

“They’re doing much better now,” Habiger said.

The program’s relatively low cost has caught the attention of higher-ups. As a result of its success at the Aberdeen detachment, Marine Corps Systems Command has taken over the acquisition and plans to purchase similar models for other systems.

And the detachment has recently acquired NGRAIN-produced models of the M16 rifle, M240G machine gun, M249 squad automatic weapon, M2 .50-caliber machine gun and M19 grenade launcher from the Army National Guard.

The models will later be made available to users of the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, embedded in technical manuals for each system, Habiger said.

For the budget-conscious Corps, the program’s relatively low price tags and now-proven results have been worth the long days and late nights of working together with NGRAIN technicians, Warrington said.

“We could have spent many thousands for a hard-trainer that would teach the same thing but would require maintenance and upkeep. This program does the same thing for a lot less. And it’s taking off,” Warrington said.