12.11.2018 - 14:24 [ NBC News ]

Pentagon and CIA enlist video games

(10.3.2003) With “Full Spectrum Warrior,” currently in testing at Fort Benning, Ga., squad leaders learn how to command nine soldiers in complex, confusing urban warfare scenarios. The game isn’t not about sprinting, “Rambo”-like, through alleys with guns blazing.

“It’s not really about shooting at things,” Macedonia said. “Learning how to shoot your weapon is easy. The challenging thing is leading.”

The game the Institute for Creative Technologies has been working on with the CIA for about a year — at a cost of several million dollars — will let agency analysts assume the role of terror cell leaders, cell members and operatives.

“Our analysts would be accustomed to looking at the world from the perspective of the terrorists we are chasing, and learn to expect the unexpected,” CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said.