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In many factories today, robots are already working alongside human workers and have been doing so for some time. Analysts anticipate that this trend is likely to grow as industrial robots become increasingly sophisticated and advanced. At the same time, there likely will be a shortage of human workers who hold the necessary technical and nontechnical skills to work with, program, and repair their machine counterparts. Given this reality, it is critical that new workers and those who are in the process of retraining have access to effective and affordable training programs. But do we have enough quality programs to serve this need? And what factors constitute a "quality program"? The RAND Corporation was asked to assess the state and future of education and training in advanced manufacturing (AM) using robotics, with a special focus on the U.S. Midwest region and the state of Pennsylvania — areas that currently are and historically have been hubs of manufacturing and provide important test cases for answering questions about the availability and content of AM training programs. The research team examines the economic context in which education, training, and workforce development programs currently operate and potentially will operate in the near future; reviews available programs and evaluates their curricular content and instructional practices and technologies; and reviews promising educational practices in these areas. The team also offers recommendations for stakeholders to consider as they work to meet the needs of the future AM workforce.

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Given the military's continuing effort to "train as we fight," warfighters must be prepared to collaborate with other services. There is a need to ensure coordination and interoperability within and across the services with respect to simulation-based training. However, because of organic changes in policies and organizational structures, there are significant challenges for the services to coordinate within their own organizations and to collaborate with one another while working toward joint training needs. Concurrent with the growing need for virtual distributed training capabilities, the military simulation-and-training market is growing, and this market includes substantial efforts to develop new training-simulator capabilities. However, technological development is not always driven by training needs, especially for cross-service exercises. Development of training simulators often drives the users rather than the reverse, especially with respect to distributed training systems. With a focus on air and ground training simulators for Tier 3 and Tier 4 exercises—i.e., training at the service component (operational) and individual unit (tactical) levels—the authors of this report investigate the gap between joint training needs and currently available and forthcoming technology in the training-simulator field. They provide a broad analysis of the simulation-based training enterprise and the organizational structure, requirements processes, and acquisition processes for each service. They also analyze joint training needs, organizational and policy mechanisms for coordination between services, and incentives structures for cross-service simulator development.

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As the anticipated character of warfare changes, new operational concepts emerge in response to new needs, and training must also adapt to support these concepts and ensure readiness. Given the speed at which concepts develop and the length of time it may take to adapt training after the fact, it is prudent to assess training capabilities and practices as concepts mature rather than after concepts have been fully operationalized. Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is emerging as the preeminent operational concept in the U.S. Department of Defense. It is intended to improve situational awareness, improve abilities to direct forces across domains and services, and facilitate rapid decisionmaking. Distributed sensors, shooters, and data from all domains are connected to joint forces, enabling coordinated exercise of authority to integrate planning and synchronize convergence in time, space, and purpose. However, JADC2 is under development by all the services as well as the Joint Staff, and therefore, plans for its execution are not yet mature. It is a complex and networked concept, and training to support this concept will require preemptive consideration of supporting capabilities, especially when considering continuation training for personnel at air operation centers (AOCs). Live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) simulations can help support the complex training that JADC2 will require, but proper development and deployment will require aligning training processes, LVC capabilities, and JADC2 training needs. Drawing from documentation review and interviews with subject-matter experts, the authors develop a road map to leverage LVC in support of JADC2 training.