A year of developing Forge with the British Army

  • Client: British Army
  • Project Lead: Tom Skelding
  • "The development of Forge for the Army will place OR Branch at the forefront of the Field Army’s transformation effort, through; standardised experimentation at scale, that is future proofed for Collective Training Transformation Programme (CTTP) and Defence Digital change and demonstrates the importance of securing data as a strategic asset."
OR Branch, Land Warfare Centre

01. Problem

Two years ago, Forge was identified by Field Army’s Operational Research Branch (OR Branch) in the Land Warfare Centre in Warminster, validating it as an effective exploitation path for the initial MoD investment of £300K through DASA. Over 4-years, through Dstl’s enabling framework, ASTRID, the OR Branch and the consortium will continue to focus Forge as a ‘best-in-class’ Field Army-focused decision support tool to support experimentation and transformation.

 

02. Approach

Since then, Cervus has been working with simulation specialists ST Engineering Antycip, global leaders in modelling and simulation technologies, MAK Technologies Inc, leading COTS simulation developer, and AI-powered spatial computing experts Hadean, to accelerate the British Army’s Operational Research Branch (ORB) use of technology to inform and support decision making.n partnership with the Field Army and Army Futures, the team have spiral developed Forge, a data and  simulation based, decision support service to transform the way the British Army experiments towards a Fifth Generation Force. Forge is currently a four-year effort which started in Feb 2023.

Forge automates the defence experimentation process, enabling continuous and iterative experimentation and a ‘fail fast, fail early’ approach.  Forge integrates the UK’s defence experimentation processes with MAK’s VR Forces constructive simulation, Hadean’s AI-powered spatial computing platform and Cervus’ Hive, a leading data analytics engine.

Decision Support@Pace. Forge automates the defence experimentation process, enabling continuous and iterative experimentation and a ‘fail fast, fail early’ approach.

Scale and Depth. Forge integrates UK’s defence experimentation processes with MAK’s VR Forces constructive simulation, Hadean’s AI-powered spatial computing platform and Cervus’ Hive, a leading data analytics engine.

03. Relevance

Capability milestones delivered this year:

  • Large Language Models (LLMs) to extract and summarise relevant doctrine and research documentation.
  • A digital collaboration toolset to compare and test concepts.
  • Supported by experts, Army staff have rapidly simulated and explored unlimited ‘what if’ future force scenarios.
  • A rapid analysis stage, which typically takes 9-12 weeks, can now be completed in less than 24 hrs, providing Army staff with near- time force structure performance feedback.
  • The ability to trigger multiple simulation scenario runs with differing parameters to conduct sensitivity analysis and enrich the quality of the data.
  • Tested deployment onto secure MoDCloud, increasing resilience, access and scalability.

04. Conclusion

  • Built and led the consortium, ensuring that the technologies were integrated into British Army processes
  • Provided Experimentation Services safeguarding coherence with Defence Experimentation policies
  • Developed LLMs specifically to extract and surface relevant knowledge from open source and doctrine.
  • Integrated Hive with VR Forces and the Hadean platform for analytics that keep pace with multiple concurrent simulations deployed on-premises, cloud or edge environments.

Learn more about Forge here

Our Mission is to provide performance insight to secure Frontline advantage and save lives.

Our Vision is be recognised as unique providers of analysis, analytics and decision support using both Cervus’ core capability and an innovative network of partners and collaborators across industry, government and academia.

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