NIWC ATLANTIC DEVELOPS PORTAL TO VIRTUAL WORLD, HOSTS MARINES FOR COAST-TO-COAST LVC EXPERIMENT

Called Virtual Stand-in-Force (VSiF) and sponsored by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL), the innovation offers Marines local access to Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) experimentation, which Department of the Navy leaders call a “game-changer.”
In fact, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith said in his Commandant’s Planning Guidance released last week that integrating constructive and virtual capabilities into Fleet initiatives can help Marines better conceal certain advantages from the adversary.
Peter C. Reddy, NIWC Atlantic Executive Director, said he was proud of the team that so quickly designed, developed and delivered the VSiF capability to the Marine Corps. “LVC exercises can deliver tremendous value to the naval force,” Reddy said. “By helping create rich, immersive and realistic environments, I believe VSiF is poised to build a bridge to experimentation and analysis that elevates the combat readiness of our war fighters.”
Last year, NIWC Atlantic’s Expeditionary Warfare (ExW) Departmentdeveloped VSiF within a nine-month timespan. In April, it was fielded to II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
The urgency to operationalize VSiF met an initial operational capability milestone this month, when an element of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) arrived in Charleston on Aug. 13 to leverage the new capability during MCWL’s annual Naval Integrated LVC Environment Experiment, or NILEX.
During the experiment, Marines learned how to navigate the virtualized environment, execute mission threads and obtain various objectives — much of that guidance provided by Dr. Matt Largent, a NIWC Atlantic Engineerassigned to the Innovation and Experimentation Cell (IEC) of ExW Department’s Terrestrial Collections and Identity Operations (TCIO) Integrated Product Team (IPT).
One Marine leader said following the event that the VSiF capability was instrumental in constructing an operating environment in which his Marines could tackle battle drills, staff planning and critical decision-making.
“MCWL’s team, alongside NIWC Atlantic, have developed a great tool in record time to meet the needs of Marines who face challenging operating environments,” said Lt. Col. Josef Wiese, 26th MEU operations officer. “I believe the VSiF tool will enable our stand-in force formations, like the Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR), to refine their standard operating procedures and become more lethal.”
Rachel Jenkins, who leads the ExW Department’s IEC directly supporting MCWL, said VSiF enables Marines to sit in a lab and “play” repetitively with virtualized combat systems, as if they are commanding and controlling real forces and weapon systems. “It’s really a unique interface,” Jenkins said. “Marines, in a safe lab environment, can assess the operational and interoperable effectiveness of multiple military systems and networks without the costly and logistical challenges that a real-world exercise requires.”
At its core, VSiF comprises roughly a dozen Virtual Machines (VMs), all of which fit on one easily deployed server. Each VM contains many gigabytes of true-to-life data, including replicas of U.S. Marine Corps programs and systems related to artillery, threat detection, fires support, air defense, and command and control.
The NIWC Atlantic VSiF team said exploration is underway to expand the virtual infrastructure to include other programs, such as important intelligence assets, in order to enhance scenarios for more dynamic simulation.
“VSiF-powered experiments not only avoid time-consuming stints at Marine Corps bases like Twentynine Palms but also sharpen the synchronicity of our forces and weapon systems,” said Toby Straight, who leads the ExW Department’s Expeditionary Intelligence Solutions Division. “Furthermore, it enables the delivery of crucial feedback to Marine stakeholders and observers concerning Force Design.”
In addition to the Charleston node, NILEX extended to the West Coast, where two other labs located in San Diego and Camp Pendletonparticipated.
NIWC Pacific engineers and personnel working in the Combined Test Bed facility provided LVC capabilities across a government network using modelling and simulation tools and support to include maritime fires and multi-domain warfare.
NIWC Pacific’s efforts enabled the simulated environment in which Marines from the 12th MLR embedded at Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity (MCTSSA) could conduct operations throughout the event using a MCTSSA-developed platform running virtualized command and control systems.
The distributed test architecture that NIWC Pacific supplied also supported the Marines plugged in at NIWC Atlantic.
Overall, however, the NILEX event was MCWL’s. With the support of NIWC Atlantic engineers and scientists, MCWL was responsible for laying the foundation for the event months ago, developing a calculus of realistic, threat-informed scenarios in a virtual world of computer-generated forces, weapon systems and a multitude of other factors — all of which constitute the “constructive” element of LVC.
“Our team was intent on ensuring each scenario was meticulously crafted to reflect real-world threats in an evolving battlefield,” said Ryan Reeder, Deputy Branch Head of MCWL’s Analysis Integration Branch. “We wanted to ensure all participants were provided a realistic, immersive training environment”.

“Our partnership with NIWC Atlantic was instrumental in bringing this vision to life,” he added, “with a shared goal to build a robust framework where our war fighters could refine their tactics in a safe yet complex virtual environment.”
In addition to MCWL, funding support for VSiF came through research and development, including NIWC Atlantic’s Naval Innovative Science and Engineering program.
Chris Sargent, who leads the TCIO IPT, said VSiF was a key component in MCWL’s vision for a “distributed modelling, simulation and assessment” capability that greatly accelerates experimentation. “The experimentation aspect of this capability can’t be overstated,” Sargent said. “VSiF is scalable to include new capabilities for blue and red forces as arsenals rapidly evolve, which, in the end, can provide Marine warfare commanders ‘sets and reps’ in realistic scenarios that will help meaningfully develop their decision superiority.”