Project WARDEC

In news- The Army Training Command recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Gandhinagar-based Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU) to develop a ‘Wargame Research and Development Centre’ in New Delhi.

About Project WARDEC-

The project, which has been given a prototype name ‘WARDEC’, will be a first-of-its-kind simulation-based training centre in India that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to design virtual reality wargames.
The Wargame Research and Development Centre will be used by the Army to train its soldiers and test their strategies through “metaverse-enabled gameplay”.
The wargame models will be designed to prepare for wars as well as counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.
The centre will come up in a military zone in New Delhi and RRU will join hands with Tech Mahindra to develop the centre.
The RRU, an institute under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), specialises in national security and policing.
Located in Gandhinagar’s Lavad village, it is an “institute of national importance” – a status granted to it by an Act of Parliament.
Soldiers will test their skills in the metaverse where their surroundings will be simulated using a combination of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
In the metaverse, the players will get a realistic experience of the actual situation.
The Army intends to use the wargame centre to train its officers in military strategies.
Apart from the armed forces, the BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP and SSB can also use the metaverse-enabled simulation exercises for better training.
The use of AI can provide a totally immersive training experience as it can simulate a battlefield close to reality and map several eventualities in the probable event of a war.
Since the 9/11 attacks, use of information technology-enabled wargaming is preferred by several countries like the US, Israel, the UK to prepare for possibilities in case of terror attacks or war.
In March 2014, several world leaders, including former German chancellor Angela Merkel, former US president Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping had played a war simulation game during the Hague Summit about how to react in case of a nuclear attack.
In that case, the target of the nuclear attack was a fictional country named Brinia.