Virtual Flag

Virtual Flag takes place four times a year and is modeled after Red Flag. The main difference, as you might have guessed, is that it's virtual. I was the project officer (PROJO) for Shaw's participation in Virtual Flag this past week, and was responsible for the planning and coordination with the Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC) at Kirtland AFB, NM. The DMOC is the central hub for these virtual wars, linking simulators from all across the world.

As the simulators from the different locations represent the "blue" air forces (good guys), the DMOC has simulators of their own to represent the "red" air forces (bad guys) as seen above. Red forces can also be flown from a computer with a joystick. Simulation does not always represent the real environment well, but it does a good job and is getting better...it's also much cheaper. Each day of Virtual Flag involved mass briefs and debriefs using video teleconference (VTC), linking all participants into one big meeting. After the briefing, we'd all "fly" our missions in a virtual world and then debrief the results. It was my first experience in something like this, and one I'm sure I'll see more of in the future as technology gets better and better.