Navakatha

Militaries spend enormous effort trying to do a paradoxical thing: create “combat realism” without combat. Live training is essential, but it is expensive, logistically heavy, environmentally constrained, and sometimes unsafe. It also cannot easily simulate rare, high-consequence situations on demand, such as a complex medical emergency, a multi-vehicle ambush, a shipboard fire in a tight compartment, or a distributed air battle where most “entities” are not physically present.

Virtual Reality (VR) and the broader family of Extended Reality (XR) tools have become one of the most practical answers to that paradox. Not because headsets are magical, but because they change the economics of repetition. They let a unit run an exercise again tomorrow, alter the conditions, capture performance data automatically, and do it without burning fuel, ammunition, or scarce platform hours.

The real story of XR in defence is not science fiction. It is training throughput, readiness measurement, and risk management. And in some areas, it is cautious experimentation with operational augmentation, where the cost of a bad user interface is not a bad day at the office, but someone getting hurt.

Explained in seconds

• Virtual Reality (VR): you wear a headset and enter a fully digital environment. Great for rehearsing procedures and scenarios that are hard to run live.
• Augmented Reality (AR): you see the real world, with digital overlays. Good for “show me what to do next” guidance, or displaying information on top of real equipment.
• Mixed Reality (MR): a stronger form of AR where digital objects are anchored to the real world more convincingly, and interaction is tighter.
• Extended Reality (XR): the umbrella term covering VR, AR, and MR.

In defence, XR is mostly used for:

• Training and mission rehearsal
• Maintenance and remote assistance
• Specialized domains like medical simulation and vehicle crew training

Some programmes also explore in-field soldier augmentation, but that is where technical risk, human factors, and safety scrutiny become intense.

Why XR fits defence problems unusually well

Defence training has constraints that map cleanly onto XR’s strengths:

• Repetition beats one-off realism.
  A perfect live exercise is great, but learning often comes from repeating the same decision loop under varied conditions. XR makes repetition cheaper and easier.
• “Rare events” need practice too.
  Many dangerous scenarios cannot be staged often (or at all). XR can simulate them safely.
• Distributed forces need shared synthetic space.
  Modern operations are joint and coalition. XR-linked simulation can connect units that are geographically separated, as part of a broader Live, Virtual, Constructive (LVC) approach, where real people interact with virtual and simulated entities.
• Data capture is built-in.
  When your world is software, you can log everything: reaction times, gaze direction, procedural compliance, comms timing, and more. That changes after-action review from “what people remember” to “what the system recorded.”
  
  This is why many programmes treat XR not as a gadget, but as a component inside a larger Modelling and Simulation (M&S) architecture, where interoperability standards and validation matter.

Use cases across the world

Infantry and combined-arms training in synthetic environments

United States: Synthetic Training Environment (STE)

The U.S. Army’s Synthetic Training Environment is designed to unify training across live, virtual, and constructive layers, emphasizing accessibility and interoperability rather than “best graphics.” An AUSA report describes STE’s intent to provide realistic, upgradeable training at the point of need and to integrate LVC elements into a coherent training ecosystem.

A crucial enabler is high-quality shared terrain data. The Army’s One World Terrain (OWT) effort is intended to provide 3D global terrain services usable across simulation trainers on the Army network.

Why this matters: terrain fidelity is not about pretty mountains. It is about whether rehearsals, mission planning, and navigation cues behave like the real place.

United Kingdom: Interim Combined Arms Virtual Simulation (Deployable) (ICAVS(D))

The UK’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) describes ICAVS(D) as a deployable virtual simulation capability supporting collective training, tied to a broader training transformation agenda.

Australia: simulation software as a training backbone

Australia has invested in simulation software to support “Future Ready Training,” including announced contracts to evolve Army computer simulation training software.

Australia also continues to use game-based simulation software across the Australian Defence Force, with renewals indicating it is treated as durable infrastructure rather than a novelty.

Brazil: VR shooting training studied in the open literature

Not all examples come from big procurement headlines. A peer-reviewed ACM publication analyzes a VR pistol shooting simulator used in the Brazilian Army context, reflecting how VR is spreading into specific skill training and evaluation.

What you should take away: across countries, the pattern is consistent. XR is most defensible when it reduces cost per training repetition and expands scenario coverage without claiming to replace live exercises entirely.

“Augmenting the soldier” and the hard reality of field AR

United States: Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS)

The most visible attempt to push XR into operational soldiering has been the U.S. Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System. Independent testing has flagged serious issues that are not “nice to fix later,” including user safety and reliability concerns, along with human factors problems like nausea and headaches during use in certain configurations.

IVAS is also notable because it embeds training as part of the concept. The Army has discussed the Squad Immersive Virtual Trainer (SiVT) as an embedded training feature enabling squad-level repetition in mixed reality-based synthetic environments.

In 2025, reporting indicated the programme direction shifted, with Anduril positioned to take over aspects of IVAS after earlier iterations struggled.

Why IVAS is the cautionary tale: Training XR is forgiving. Operational XR is not. In the field, the headset competes with real-world movement, peripheral awareness, fatigue, heat, sweat, weapon handling, and the need to interpret ambiguous situations fast. A small increase in cognitive load can erase the supposed benefit, or worse.

Air power: VR for reps, AR for “synthetic adversaries,” and training pipeline pressure

United States: Pilot Training Next (PTN)

The U.S. Air Force has described Pilot Training Next as a programme experimenting with new training approaches and technologies, including VR, to improve training efficiency and learning outcomes.

The point is not that VR replaces flight. The point is that VR can shift early-stage learning (procedures, scan patterns, basic coordination) earlier in the pipeline, so expensive flight hours are spent on what only flight can teach.

There is also experimentation with AR systems intended to present virtual training entities during real flight, aiming to create flexible training scenarios without needing a matching number of live aircraft. Recent reporting has highlighted this direction in U.S. pilot training contexts.

France: VR with geospatial realism for helicopter training

France has been reported as using VR training approaches for helicopter crews, including leveraging geospatial simulation tooling integrated into real-time engines.

Maritime and shipboard training: high risk, tight spaces, strong fit

Australia: VR and AR for firefighting training

Shipboard firefighting is dangerous to train at full intensity. The Royal Australian Navy has trialled systems combining VR and AR to simulate firefighting exercises, letting trainees practice without creating the same physical risk and disruption.

Why this domain loves XR:

• confined environments are hard to replicate
• smoke, heat, and visibility conditions are hazardous
• repetition is essential for muscle memory and coordination

XR does not replace live drills, but it can multiply the number of meaningful reps before a crew ever enters a live-burn environment.

Vehicle crews and driver readiness: keeping platforms available

A huge amount of military readiness is about crews being competent on complex platforms without taking those platforms out of service for training.

France: driver training via simulators

France’s Ministry of the Armed Forces has used driving simulators to enhance driver operational readiness and practice high-intensity scenarios without the same wear, fuel use, and scheduling constraints of live vehicle training.

Germany: platform training systems and adoption signals

Germany’s defence ecosystem includes modern simulation systems for platforms, including reported approval of a training system for the Puma infantry fighting vehicle.

Maintenance, logistics, and remote expert support: AR’s most mature “operations-adjacent” win

Maintenance is a sweet spot for AR because success is measurable and mistakes are costly.

United States Air Force: AR for maintenance workflows

The U.S. Air Force has described use of HoloLens 2 as a head-mounted AR tool supporting maintenance-oriented workflows, emphasizing hands-free access to information.

United States Navy: Augmented Reality Maintenance System (ARMS)

The U.S. Navy has fielded ARMS on multiple ships, enabling sailors to connect with remote subject matter experts for troubleshooting, reducing the need for travel and speeding resolution of system failures.

Why this matters strategically:

• it reduces downtime
• it scales expertise across a fleet
• it creates a digital record of what was done, and what worked

This is one of the clearest cases where AR delivers value without needing battlefield-level robustness.

Medical training and combat casualty care: repetition without ethical or logistical traps

Military medical training needs realism, but it also needs repetition and safe failure.

Military Health System: simulation as an institutional capability

The U.S. Military Health System runs formal programmes around medical simulation and training, treating it as a managed portfolio rather than ad hoc experimentation.

The Defense Health Agency has also described how digital tools and simulation help medics repeat tasks until performance becomes reliable under pressure.

Evidence in the medical literature

Military Medicine has published work comparing simulation modalities for combat casualty care, highlighting that extended reality is one tool among many (manikins, task trainers, role players), each with trade-offs.

There is also peer-reviewed research testing immersive VR simulation against other medical simulation forms in trauma contexts.

Australia: mixed reality for aeromedical evacuation training

Australia has reported a mixed-reality simulator for aeromedical teams that lets trainees use real equipment while operating inside a virtual scenario space, aiming to train evacuation protocols more safely and repeatably.

Israel: unit-level simulation and operationally relevant rehearsal

Israel has invested heavily in simulation for years, especially for combined arms and urban operations.

The Israel Defense Forces has publicly described training simulation for units such as the Givati Brigade, indicating a structured approach to synthetic preparation.

Reputable defence reporting has also described large-scale mission training centres and simulation investments supporting brigade and battlegroup training.

India: institutionalizing simulators and building research capacity

India’s approach includes both policy frameworks and research partnerships.

Framework and governance

India’s Ministry of Defence has published a “Framework for Simulators in Armed Forces,” explicitly aiming to optimize exploitation of simulators across services, which is a key step in moving from scattered purchases to an integrated training strategy.

R&D capacity: IIT Hyderabad and the Indian Army

IIT Hyderabad announced a Centre of Excellence, VIGRAHA (Virtual, Intelligent, Ground-breaking Research in AR/VR & High-tech Applications for Indian Army), in collaboration with the Army’s simulator development organizations.

What breaks

XR fails in defence for predictable reasons. The best programmes assume these problems will happen and design around them.

• Training transfer is not automatic.
  A trainee can “win” in VR and still fail in the real world if physical cues, stress, or timing differ. This is why verification, validation, and accreditation are treated as disciplines, not paperwork.
• Human factors are mission factors.
  Cybersickness, eye strain, heat load, and cognitive overload can quietly destroy effectiveness. IVAS testing is a reminder that discomfort is not a minor user experience issue when you are moving fast and making decisions under pressure.
• Interoperability is harder than it looks.
  If one simulator cannot talk to another, joint training becomes a patchwork. Defence M&S standards profiles explicitly focus on interoperability and common approaches across systems.
• Security and supply chain constraints are real.
  You cannot simply “run it in the cloud” when the content is sensitive, networks are constrained, or hardware supply chains are contested.

The technical layer: what modern defence XR systems actually need

• Scene and physics fidelity that matches the task
  For marksmanship, recoil and weapon handling matter. For command training, communication timing and information ambiguity matter more than photorealism. The “right fidelity” is task-dependent.
• Instrumentation and analytics
  Modern training systems increasingly treat performance data as a first-class output: who saw what, when they reacted, whether procedures were followed, and how teams coordinated.
• LVC connectivity and standards
  Large-scale training often requires DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation), HLA (High Level Architecture), or similar simulation interoperability patterns, plus disciplined control of time, entity states, and after-action logging.
• Terrain pipelines
  Efforts like One World Terrain show how seriously terrain is treated as shared infrastructure, not a one-off asset.
• Safety engineering
  “Safe immersion” is a real engineering topic, including physical space constraints, collision risk, and user health considerations, increasingly reflected in defence standard profiles.

Where this is going in 2026

Three trajectories look robust:

• XR becomes normal inside the training stack, not the headline. The differentiator will be scenario libraries, instructor tooling, data, and interoperability, not headset specs.
• AR grows fastest in maintenance and technical support, where value is measurable and risk is manageable. Navy ARMS is a good example of “operationally useful AR” without battlefield complexity.
• Soldier-worn operational XR remains the hardest problem. Programmes will continue, but they will be shaped by human factors evidence and safety constraints as much as by sensor or display advances, as IVAS demonstrates.

The strategic takeaway is simple: XR is not a replacement for reality. It is a tool for manufacturing better repetitions of reality’s decision loops, at scale, under constraints. Defence organizations that treat XR as part of an engineered training system, with validation, standards, and measurable outcomes, are the ones most likely to see real readiness gains.