Across allied nations, the readiness challenge is growing sharper and more complex. Operations are increasingly multi‑domain.
Adversaries adapt faster and employ deception more aggressively. Cyber and electronic warfare (EW) effects are integrated into every phase of conflict. Battlespace density is rising—on the ground, at sea, in the air, and across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this environment, traditional training methods can no longer produce the level of preparedness required by modern defence forces.
“The largest obstacles to achieving a joint/multinational … system of systems is interoperability and persistence.”[i]
Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) Is Essential, but Remains Out of Reach
For decades, readiness has rested on a predictable foundation: personnel, equipment and sustainment, with training events conducted primarily in the live environment. Now live training is constrained in ways that fundamentally limit its ability to replicate modern operations. Threats, such as long‑range precision fires, integrated air defences, or contested electromagnetic effects cannot be routinely and safely emulated. Simulating multi‑domain dynamics, especially those involving cyber, space, and information scenarios, is a struggle. Live training is further limited by physical infrastructure, airspace/sea space availability, environmental restrictions, and cost. Many emerging capabilities, such as next‑generation EW or long‑range fires, simply cannot be exercised live without revealing sensitive tactics or technology.
The result is a widening readiness gap: forces are expected to operate in hyper‑complex, high‑threat environments, but rarely have the opportunity to train in conditions that fully replicate them.
Future Conflict Can’t Be Trained Live
As autonomous and remotely operated systems become the first to engage in high‑risk environments—whether drones, unmanned maritime vessels, ground robots, or distributed sensors—human operators must transition to roles that require constant adaptation, rapid decision‑making, and coordination across multiple domains.
This shift demands training environments that can mirror such new technology-supported battlefield threats as swarming unmanned systems, deceptive electronic warfare effects, multi‑layered cyber threats and dynamic long‑range fires.
Joint and coalition coordination must take place across vast geography and multiple sites. No live training environment can fully replicate this evolving battlefield.
Beyond readiness, LVC delivers compelling efficiency, especially when integrated with modern training ranges.
“Senior U.S. Navy leadership reports up to a 100:1 cost avoidance ratio when LVC replaces or augments live training for certain scenarios [ii] making it unsurprising that the Navy has formally stated that “LVC is the future of high‑end training—particularly against peer threats that cannot be safely replicated live.”[iii]
Why Multinational Forces Can’t Train as They Fight
The term LVC is widely used across the defence sector, often without precision. Virtual training has been standard for decades with immersive simulators allowing humans to train without live platforms. Constructive simulation generates computer‑driven units and behaviors to fill out the battlespace. Live training integrates real platforms, sensors, and operators.
The real value of LVC lies in deliberately integrating all three into a single, coherent training environment, bringing together live human operators, human‑in‑the‑loop simulators, and AI‑driven constructive forces—within a secure, networked common ecosystem.
Integrating live platforms into a virtual‑constructive ecosystem is technically and organizationally complex. It requires the modification of platform software and mission systems, moving data securely across classification boundaries and aligning threat models and behaviours, all while ensuring consistent fidelity across services and nations.
Currently no country outside of the U.S. has a dedicated, enterprise-level LVC Program of Record. Capabilities are fragmented across legacy systems, making it difficult to achieve scale or standardization. Nations, including Canada, are working to integrate LVC capabilities through multiple separate programs. Canadian Armed Forces have prioritized LVC in major mission readiness modernization initiatives. Elsewhere, focus is on networking architectures, simulation enterprises, training system upgrades, OEM platform modifications, and modernization initiatives, but nothing focused on LVC as the enabler. An enterprise-level LVC architecture would enable more frequent, even ad-hoc training events by facilitating the coordination requirements.
And, as each Nation works independently, the true opportunity for multi-national force collaboration falls further behind. Without an enterprise-level “Program of Record”, effective allied interoperability is handicapped by differing network standards; varying classification layers; mis-matched constructive models; inconsistent standards of live platform integration; and divergent data formats and fidelity requirements. The ideal LVC solution would enable allied interconnectivity while allowing nations to retain sovereign control over their data and what data is shared.
Even where standards exist, they have not delivered operational LVC at scale. NATO has acknowledged, regarding their simulation architecture and C2 simulation interoperability initiatives, that “while STANAGs 4856 and 4603 were intended to provide for persistent federation, they have not provided for plug‑and‑play integration of an LVC C2/Sim capability.”[iv]
If readiness is to match real‑world threats, armed forces must address these issues and close the gap.
AI‑Enabled LVC: Training for Complexity Before First Contact
“Artificial intelligence enables adaptive training environments by dynamically generating scenarios, modeling adversary behavior, and evolving in real time based on user actions.”[v]
LVC provides architecture, while AI helps make training realistic, adaptive, and operationally effective. In AI‑enabled LVC environments, threats are not scripted. They adapt, maneuver, and deceive like real adversaries. Electronic warfare effects dynamically degrade sensors and communications. Battlespace evolves in real time based on trainee decisions. Long‑range fires, drone swarms, and forces reposition with believable, doctrine‑informed behavior, while automated performance analysis and after‑action reporting capture both what happened and why.
This fundamentally changes how forces train. Training shifts from rehearsing procedures to solving complex problems under pressure—where each repetition strengthens judgment, coordination, and decision‑making, not just platform proficiency.
Modern operations demand far more than technical skill. They require multi‑domain coordination, rapid threat assessment, mission command under uncertainty, integration with autonomous systems, and seamless joint and coalition interoperability. AI‑enabled LVC integrated with modern ranges allows these competencies to be trained early and continuously. Instead of learning in clean, controlled environments, service members are exposed from the start to the chaos, ambiguity, and friction of real operations.
They enter the force with an instinctive understanding of complexity—because they have already lived it. This creates a force that is more adaptable, more resilient, and ready to operate with confidence inside the fog of modern war, before first contact is ever made.
Unlocking LVC Through an Integrated Learning Ecosystem
To fully realize the potential of LVC, defence forces require more than individual or independent systems. They will need secure, multi‑classification networking that enables joint and coalition participation as well as scalable LVC architectures capable of integrating new domains and platforms. Common threat libraries, models, and behaviors are required to ensure interoperability, along with AI‑driven constructive forces that can replicate peer adversaries.
An integrated learning ecosystem is a persistent, learner‑centric training environment that seamlessly connects Live, Virtual, and Constructive elements into a single, coherent experience. It enables continuous learning across individual, team, joint, and coalition levels, rather than relying on isolated exercises. The focus moves from platform proficiency to decision‑making, coordination, and adaptation in complex, contested environments, shared scenarios that reflect modern, multi‑domain operations—air, land, maritime, cyber, space, and information.
This ecosystem, powered by a common digital backbone, ensures interoperability, data sharing, and time synchronization across distributed sites. Scenarios dynamically evolve to include autonomous systems, electronic warfare, cyber disruption, and long‑range effects, while embedded analytics capture decisions and outcomes in real time. These insights feed after‑action reviews, competency tracking, and ultimately doctrine, tactics, and capability development.
The result is a secure, coalition‑ready learning system that continuously improves human performance and organizational readiness in the face of rapidly evolving operational challenges.
Many existing or legacy training ecosystems struggle to deliver this level of realism and integration. Episodic exercises, siloed simulators, and nationally constrained systems often reveal interoperability and readiness gaps only when forces operate together - late in the readiness cycle.
Closing this gap requires close collaboration between the military and industry partners able to integrate complex training environments across platforms, domains, and national boundaries.
Readiness in the Age of Autonomous, Multi‑Domain Conflict
“Training is the foundation on which all other readiness pillars depend.”[vi]
Modern armed forces face a readiness challenge that live training alone cannot solve. The battlespace is too dense, too dynamic, too multi‑domain, and too digital. The only way to prepare forces for this environment is through the integration of AI‑enabled LVC training ecosystems that are realistic, secure, scalable, and interoperable.
The nations that embrace LVC early will build forces capable of thriving in the chaos of modern conflict. Those that do not will struggle to keep pace with adversaries who are already integrating autonomy, electronic warfare, and distributed operations into every facet of their battlespace.
Training is the foundation of military readiness. It is the only function that touches every other readiness pillar simultaneously—people, equipment, command and control, and sustainment. Well trained forces make better use of limited platforms, adapt faster to degraded conditions, and recover more quickly from friction and surprise. As modern operations become multi‑domain, distributed, and increasingly influenced by autonomy, electronic warfare, and cyber effects, the training environment itself must evolve to reflect that reality. This is where Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) training becomes an enabler rather than an enhancement.
LVC allows armed forces to scale complexity beyond what live training alone can safely, affordably, or repeatedly provide—integrating real personnel and platforms with high‑fidelity virtual systems and AI‑driven constructive forces. In doing so, it enables training that builds decision‑making under pressure, coalition interoperability, and mission command in contested conditions—precisely the competencies that determine success in today’s operational environment.
The question is no longer whether LVC should be part of modern training, but how deliberately and how quickly armed forces formally embed it as a core readiness capability.
In the future fight, readiness will belong to the prepared—and preparation begins with LVC.
[i] Hilker, Jason Noel, “NATO LVC Exercises as the Interoperability Solution to a Multi-National “Iron Dome” “ NATO STO https://publications.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Meeting%20Proceedings/STO-MP-MSG-229/MP-MSG-229-15.pdf
[ii] Allyson Park, “Live, Virtual, Constructive Called the Future of Navy Training,” National Defense
Magazine, November 29, 2023, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/11/29/live-virtual-constructive-called-the-future-of-navy-training
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Hilker, “NATO LVC Exercises.”
[v] Wismar, Ch, Lt Col Eric A. June 20, 2025, Future-Proofing PME: How AI is Redefining Adaptive Wargaming and Strategic Readiness Future-Proofing PME: How AI is Redefining Adaptive Wargaming and Strategic Readiness > Air University (AU) > Wild Blue Yonder
[vi] Neal, Major General Brian G, Deskins, Brigadier General Dawne L, 2015, The Air National Guard LVC Flight Plan, AFD-160329-033.pdf
