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1. What is DARWARS?
DARWARS is a DARPA-funded research project to accelerate the development and deployment of the next generation of training systems. These low-cost, mobile, web-centric, simulation-based systems will take advantage of the ubiquitous presence of the PC and of new technology, including multi-player games, virtual worlds, off-the-shelf PC simulations, intelligent agents, and on-line communities.
As part of the DARWARS project, which started in 2003, several advanced training systems have been developed as exemplars of what is possible. Early versions of two of these systems are already being deployed to meet urgent training needs in Iraq. The project will produce an architectural framework, including a set of web services, tools, and system interface definitions that will facilitate the development of advanced training systems by all vendors and their deployment and use by instructors over a global network. The DARWARS framework is scalable; it will support training for individuals, teams, or teams of teams (involving hundreds of students at PCs all over the world interacting on a virtual battlefield). Training systems will be able to keep track of what each student does in the simulation in order to offer individual and group feedback. The project will also create an on-line community of students, instructors and developers around the DARWARS family of training systems. 2. Who needs DARWARS?
DARWARS will enable the development of affordable training systems that address several identified military training problems, including team training, joint operations training, Reserves and Guard training, between-schoolhouse skill decay, last-minute training, and training during troop deployment. Because they are motivating to the student and are available anywhere, anytime, DARWARS training systems are the key to unparalleled training effectiveness. 3. What's the challenge that DARWARS is addressing?
The next generation of training systems will be accessible from PC's all over the world and will allow any number of students to practice together in the same simulated training environment. The DARPA DARWARS project is addressing many of the underlying conceptual and infrastructure problems that must be solved before these systems can be deployed. One set of challenges are pedagogical, such as how to map students’ training objectives to experiential training events, and how to combine these objectives with teams or teams of teams. Another set is technical, such as how to distribute software in real time over a wide range of environments. A final set of challenges are community-based, such as how to create a manageable system that allows individuals to contribute their experiences to the wider training community. 4. Is DARWARS SCORM compliant?
Potentially, DARWARS could play the role of a SCO server for experiential learning content. Training systems developers are, as in the past, responsible for defining the SCOs. 5. Is DARWARS an LMS?
No, DARWARS interfaces with all LMS data. DARWARS does extend LMS functionality to support several new training issues including defining learning objectives for simulation-based training and for team training; team formation and scheduling; background distribution of software and content to remote PCs; record and playback of simulated training events; and an on-line learning community. 6. How is DARWARS different from virtual worlds like There.com and Massively Multi-player On-line Games (MMPOGs) like America’s Army?
Virtual Worlds are designed for player/player and player/avatar interactions in a particular context. They are not specifically designed for training purposes. MMPOG games allow players to adopt specified roles in a simulated environment, but do not provide real training support via functionality such as coaching or AAR.
Both virtual worlds and MMPOGs can used for training, but will need the DARWARS framework to support training objectives. 7. Is DARWARS open source?
There are some component licensing issues still to be resolved, but generally the DARWARS tools and web services will be made available as open source as part of a developer community website. Other unresolved issues, such as what constitutes compatibility with the framework, and how that can be accomplished, will be resolved with input from all major DARWARS constituencies in the coming year. 8. What is BBN’s role in the DARWARS development?
BBN is the integration and architecture contractor for the DARPA DARWARS project. BBN will develop the framework. BBN anticipates that over the next year, several other vendors’ training systems will be deployed using the DARWARS infrastructure. BBN will support early adopters in their integration with DARWARS. Eventually, it expects a community of training developers and trainers to form around DARWARS and push the technology and the vision forward. | 
