Ken, here is a response to your post:

This morning's first presentation at TSLC was a video game-based briefing of the May 2009 Farah province ambush and subsequent bombing incident.

The purpose of the presentation was to demonstrate to the audience the utility of the video game-based training tool. The presenters ran the video for several minutes then stopped it and engaged the audience with "what now, Captain?" type questions. The presenters asserted that they have the capability to rapidly convert real world combat actions into video training tools that they can then distribute globally, even to soldiers' i-Phones.

The short history of leaders training: dirt drawing, chalk boards, white boards, PowerPoint, now video game simulations. The goal is to improve leaders' decision-making skills. The questions is whether the new technology leads to better thinking. Or might it stifle the development of a young leader's open imagination?

The audience was enthusiastic about the promise of video-based training, and thought it essential to keep the attention of younger soldier-students.

What about transitioning from Tasks, Conditions, Standards to an Outcome-based training system? At the leader development level, my impression is that the TRADOC senior leaders very much desire to go that way. I think they believe that the video scenario/"what now, Captain?" method will do a better job of developing decision-making skills compared to anything that has come before. Naturally, we will have to wait and see.

-Robert Haddick