Zelik, who said he had “no formal military experience,” was “shocked” at the weight of the equipment soldiers carry. “I am a true civilian in every sense of the word,” he said.
The researcher was one of about 200 military and civilian personnel who participated in Tech Warrior 2015, a 10-day exercise at Wright State University’s NCMR, also known as Calamityville. It marked the first time the Air Force Research Laboratory exercise was played in Ohio since Tech Warrior began after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Zelik, who is with the 711th Human Performance Wing, said he’ll take this knowledge back to the lab, as he works to find ways to meet troops’ surveillance needs on the ground and prevent incidents like surprise attacks.
“It’s intelligence that could lay the groundwork to potentially prevent those things from happening in the first place,” he said.
Part of the role-playing gave AFRL engineers an idea of what airmen or soldiers on the battlefield go through under fire. Airmen and soldiers of the Ohio National Guard tested new technologies meant for the warfighter.
“For a science and technology exercise, you can’t ask for a better way to teach a scientist what it’s like to be in the field,” said Air Force Reserve Lt. Col David Shahady, exercise commander, as he rode Tuesday in the back of a troop-carrying truck on a dusty and bumpy road.
Zalik, like his fellow engineers, survived a make-believe chemical attack in a cement plant and a smoke-filled simulated IED attack with rapid-fire rounds of blank ammunition targeted at a convoy of Humvees. He also rappelled down a wall, learned how to navigate on land day and night, and got less sleep than normal.
Researchers brought an array of gadgets and technology to test. One experiment placed video cameras around Calamityville to collect intelligence that analysts processed for threats and sent to troops in real time.
Some troops donned wearable technology like biosensors to monitor their physiological reactions, or wore augmented-reality eyeglasses that superimposed symbols and identified where they were in relation to threats.
“We’ve been able to try new things literally on the fly,” said George Raihala, a Wright State Research Institute technology program manager.
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