Develop an immersive Driver Training System for the U.S. Marine Corps’ crucial Amphibious Combat Vehicle
18 months from prototype contract to deployment
Other Transaction Authority (OTA)
How can young Warfighters, many who don’t even have a driver’s license, be trained to drive a 35-ton amphibious vehicle?
The average age of military personnel remains low. Many of these young women and men are digital natives, having grown up frequently interfacing with virtual environments and gaming-related hardware and technology.
Recognizing this, the Marines sought to modernize and standardize their ACV driver training program. The goal was to quickly develop and deploy a high-fidelity virtual training environment offering several disparate terrains – including land, water and surf zone – with the aim of increasing safety and readiness in the field.
To address this, XRT built the now-deployed digital twin XR motion platform – the Wave Warrior Amphibious Combat Vehicle Driver Training System (ACV-DTS).
After submitting our initial bid, XRT was selected to develop the Wave Warrior prototype. In just 107 days, our team of specialized experts built a working prototype ready for user evaluations.
As testing phases progressed through LUE to FUE, the XRT team worked closely with subject matter experts and Marine Corps stakeholders to ensure the final product met the evolving program needs, and matched the real-world experiences of ACV drivers. More than 60 USMC leadership and ACV drivers participated in the extensive testing of the prototype. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with our digital twin ocean receiving specific praise for its unmatched realism.
Upon the completion of final testing, the prototype was then approved for production. We were tasked with producing and deploying 81 simulators to locations around the world. We worked heads down over the course of several short weeks, constructing each simulator by hand to ensure highest level quality.
The delivery and deployment phase was vital to ensuring Wave Warrior seamlessly integrated with the operational environment and existing training progress tracking systems. XRT coordinated meticulously with Marine Corps personnel to facilitate a smooth transition and provide comprehensive training on this new platform.
The system’s ability to replicate real-world combat conditions is a significant leap forward in tactical wheeled vehicle training, providing unparalleled realism and efficacy in a deployable format. As such, the Wave Warrior ACV-DTS is now part of the official ACV training curriculum, and trackable in MCTIMS.
Wave Warrior is designed to be future-proof. With an adaptable software architecture housed in COTS-based hardware, updates can be made quickly as training needs, vehicle specs and combat conditions evolve independently. This greatly extends the lifecycle of the training system. As such, XRT will continue providing technical support, updates and training as needed for these systems across the next 2.5 years.
XRT’s immersive training platform is a modular, digital-twin-based system that delivers gunnery, driving, crew, and maintenance training in one unified solution. Designed for rapid deployment and low overhead, it leverages real-world vehicle data, direct input from SMEs, and flexible hardware configurations to support mission-ready skill development.
Built with defense-specific workflows and deep OTA experience, the platform is engineered to meet operational needs on an accelerated timeline.
XRT and its partners designed, developed, and rapidly deployed the Wave Warrior ACV-DTS to deliver immersive, vehicle-accurate training to U.S. Marine Corps operators at the point of need. Built on a digital twin core and flexible software architecture, the system enables mission-ready skill building in a safe, repeatable environment while reducing costs and supporting scalable updates.
Delivered through the OTA framework, Wave Warrior showcases the critical role of small businesses in accelerating defense innovation and lays the foundation for future enhancements like full-crew XR training, global terrain simulations, and data-driven performance tracking.
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