The American armed forces consider that training is part of their strategy. As you can see in this video, they have built up war zones that may look real; the situations may sound real too, and yet they aren’t. Realism directly coming from lessons learned ( LL – J7 ) is key to success.
The purpose of these reality-based exercises is to get as close as possible to the war zone reality. For instance, a humanitarian operation firstly carried out by airmen may turn into urban combat. In order to get more familiar with these situations, the local honor codes seem to be respected. Every detail counts on the battlefield as you can see in the video when the soldiers meet up with the village muktar (kind of a judge/leader in the village) to be introduced to the hospital administrator.
Collateral damage is utterly detrimental to any environmental peacebuilding process, and it is obvious that this kind of training will spare lives both in the civilian and the military on the battlefield.
Video:
It is interesting to notice that the U.S. Air Force is highly involved in training through virtual combat situations on the ground. It certainly improves situational awareness on the tactical field. See this page.
