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American Morning
Interview with Billy Mills
Aired December 03, 2002 - 08:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we're going to go now from a real clash to a virtual combat, getting ready for a real war. The world's most sophisticated technology is already helping soldiers prepare for battle like never before.
And our Miles O'Brien is in Orlando getting not only a firsthand look, it looks like a firsthand hands-on try out on this technology -- Miles, good morning.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, yes. Good morning, Daryn.
It's sort of like a simulate war zone here. We're here in Orlando at the convention center. Hundreds of booths here representing the state-of-the-art in simulation -- land, air and sea. I'm here at the Marine Corps booth, where they're testing out a system which not only helps troops and Marines learn how to do their job well, it also is used in the development of weaponry.
To help us out in this is Captain Billy Mills, who's one of the product managers of this whole program. Uh-oh, is your machine gun jammed up there, Captain?
CAPT. BILLY MILLS, U.S. MARINE CORPS: That's right. This is what these machine guns are for, you can (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'BRIEN: All right, so that's a good simulation right there.
MILLS: That's a good simulation.
O'BRIEN: Captain Mills, give us a sense of what this gun is all about and what this simulation does for you.
MILLS: All right, this is called the M-240 Goff (ph).
O'BRIEN: You mind if I try it while you're talking?
MILLS: Go right ahead.
O'BRIEN: All right, all right. I'll try it now.
MILLS: The M-240 Goff (ph) is built into the Marine Corps currently.
O'BRIEN: All right, yes.
MILLS: It shoots a 7.62 round. And what we have it doing right now is it's jamming on you. It's one of the things...
O'BRIEN: Ooh, OK.
MILLS: ... that we're going to rehearse in the Marine Corps. And what we teach the Marines is how to react to particular jams, what their immediate action drills are to get the weapon back up and running.
O'BRIEN: What's the advantage of having a system like this as opposed to just going out and doing some target practice?
MILLS: Well, there's a couple of advantages. First off, you can do a lot of rehearsals before you ever even go out to the field. It costs a lot of money for us to go out in the field, a lot of prep time to get out there and get those ranges locked on so we can iron out a lot of those issues, do a lot of rehearsals while we're back in the rear.
And then when we go out there, we have a base line knowledge. We're a lot more capable with our weapons. And then we get the most bang out of each round of ammunition that we fire.
O'BRIEN: All right, let me ask you this, if you're in a Marine expeditionary unit out in the Gulf, for example, thinking about some sort of attack on Iraq, would you have this kind of technology on board to practice?
MILLS: Absolutely. We have, the Marine Corps has a lot of these types of systems. We bring them on deployments with them. They're located at our embassies and we have a number of different scenarios that we can select from to train either in the desert, in urban environments. We can grab D-tech (ph) data from just about anywhere in the world and generate a scenario that would be applicable to the mission that we're about to go take.
O'BRIEN: I'll tell you what, why don't you guys -- over here one of the big advantages, you can see a replay of your shots. While he's spooling that up, I want to ask you about this. This is a new weapon that is in development.
MILLS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: And if you were to actually fire real rounds on that, it's, what, $2,000 a round, right?
MILLS: $2,300 a round. And they're developmental rounds, that's why they're so expensive. And what this system allows us to do is to reduce the costs associated with firing those rounds because we can do it in a simulated environment.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get a shot, let's take a look at some of the shots right here. This is a replay of essentially -- of course, the captain did quite a few before me -- but you see the blue streaks there are misses, the red streaks are hits. Daryn, obviously a very useful training tool for the Marines. Also a good way of developing new weaponry. This is just one of the first stops we're going to take here today as we show you the latest and greatest in military simulations -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Miles, did you hit anything in your target practice?
O'BRIEN: Did I hit anything? Did I hit a thing?
MILLS: You did pretty good, actually. It looks like you hit that one warrior right down there in this end.
O'BRIEN: I hit one guy.
KAGAN: He got one guy.
O'BRIEN: I hit one guy. But, hey, I had a jammed machine gun.
KAGAN: Yes, the old jammed machine gun excuse.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of spent shells on the ground.
KAGAN: We're keeping you stateside, Miles.
But thanks for showing us that stuff.
O'BRIEN: You think they're virtual shells.
KAGAN: He had a good time, though.
HEMMER: Yes, he did. Great observation by you, though.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 3, 2002 - 08:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we're going to go now from a real clash to a virtual combat, getting ready for a real war. The world's most sophisticated technology is already helping soldiers prepare for battle like never before.
And our Miles O'Brien is in Orlando getting not only a firsthand look, it looks like a firsthand hands-on try out on this technology -- Miles, good morning.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, yes. Good morning, Daryn.
It's sort of like a simulate war zone here. We're here in Orlando at the convention center. Hundreds of booths here representing the state-of-the-art in simulation -- land, air and sea. I'm here at the Marine Corps booth, where they're testing out a system which not only helps troops and Marines learn how to do their job well, it also is used in the development of weaponry.
To help us out in this is Captain Billy Mills, who's one of the product managers of this whole program. Uh-oh, is your machine gun jammed up there, Captain?
CAPT. BILLY MILLS, U.S. MARINE CORPS: That's right. This is what these machine guns are for, you can (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'BRIEN: All right, so that's a good simulation right there.
MILLS: That's a good simulation.
O'BRIEN: Captain Mills, give us a sense of what this gun is all about and what this simulation does for you.
MILLS: All right, this is called the M-240 Goff (ph).
O'BRIEN: You mind if I try it while you're talking?
MILLS: Go right ahead.
O'BRIEN: All right, all right. I'll try it now.
MILLS: The M-240 Goff (ph) is built into the Marine Corps currently.
O'BRIEN: All right, yes.
MILLS: It shoots a 7.62 round. And what we have it doing right now is it's jamming on you. It's one of the things...
O'BRIEN: Ooh, OK.
MILLS: ... that we're going to rehearse in the Marine Corps. And what we teach the Marines is how to react to particular jams, what their immediate action drills are to get the weapon back up and running.
O'BRIEN: What's the advantage of having a system like this as opposed to just going out and doing some target practice?
MILLS: Well, there's a couple of advantages. First off, you can do a lot of rehearsals before you ever even go out to the field. It costs a lot of money for us to go out in the field, a lot of prep time to get out there and get those ranges locked on so we can iron out a lot of those issues, do a lot of rehearsals while we're back in the rear.
And then when we go out there, we have a base line knowledge. We're a lot more capable with our weapons. And then we get the most bang out of each round of ammunition that we fire.
O'BRIEN: All right, let me ask you this, if you're in a Marine expeditionary unit out in the Gulf, for example, thinking about some sort of attack on Iraq, would you have this kind of technology on board to practice?
MILLS: Absolutely. We have, the Marine Corps has a lot of these types of systems. We bring them on deployments with them. They're located at our embassies and we have a number of different scenarios that we can select from to train either in the desert, in urban environments. We can grab D-tech (ph) data from just about anywhere in the world and generate a scenario that would be applicable to the mission that we're about to go take.
O'BRIEN: I'll tell you what, why don't you guys -- over here one of the big advantages, you can see a replay of your shots. While he's spooling that up, I want to ask you about this. This is a new weapon that is in development.
MILLS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: And if you were to actually fire real rounds on that, it's, what, $2,000 a round, right?
MILLS: $2,300 a round. And they're developmental rounds, that's why they're so expensive. And what this system allows us to do is to reduce the costs associated with firing those rounds because we can do it in a simulated environment.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's get a shot, let's take a look at some of the shots right here. This is a replay of essentially -- of course, the captain did quite a few before me -- but you see the blue streaks there are misses, the red streaks are hits. Daryn, obviously a very useful training tool for the Marines. Also a good way of developing new weaponry. This is just one of the first stops we're going to take here today as we show you the latest and greatest in military simulations -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Miles, did you hit anything in your target practice?
O'BRIEN: Did I hit anything? Did I hit a thing?
MILLS: You did pretty good, actually. It looks like you hit that one warrior right down there in this end.
O'BRIEN: I hit one guy.
KAGAN: He got one guy.
O'BRIEN: I hit one guy. But, hey, I had a jammed machine gun.
KAGAN: Yes, the old jammed machine gun excuse.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of spent shells on the ground.
KAGAN: We're keeping you stateside, Miles.
But thanks for showing us that stuff.
O'BRIEN: You think they're virtual shells.
KAGAN: He had a good time, though.
HEMMER: Yes, he did. Great observation by you, though.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
