FBI Licenses Unreal 3 Engine

According to several news reports, the FBI will be among several US agencies to obtain a licence to use Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) to "develop serious games" in order to "train participants and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that commonly affect all types of intelligence analysis" (statement source).

The study aims to help develop methods of removing bias from intelligence analysis. Some of the biases being tackled are "(1) Confirmation Bias, (2) Fundamental Attribution Error, (3) Bias Blind Spot, (4) Anchoring Bias, (5) Representativeness Bias, and (6) Projection Bias".

No financial records were released,but the BBC says that one statement showed that the licence to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) agency was worth more than $10million (£6.3million).

Other uses to which UE3 will be put include:

• Developing a crime scene training simulator for the FBI Academy
• Developing an anaesthesiology training simulator for army medics
• A "visualisation tool" for weapons researchers

Part of the reason for the interest in UE3 seems to be as a cost saving measure. Colonel Robert White gave a speech earlier in the week highlighting the importance of gaming to the military. "Every leader struggles with limited time, dollars and resources". "Those same leaders know it's better to practice something first before you do it for real in live training. Live training is where our highest risk and greatest expense comes from". For reference, one Tomahawk Cruise Missile costs between US$600,000 and US$1.4million (source).

This announcement follows shortly after the announcement made in December by the UK's Ministry of Defence that it was planning to upgrade its simulation technology.

Have any thoughts or opinions on this? Is it a good thing that military is using computer software rather than spending huge amounts of money on live firing excercises? Would you rather the military stayed away from gaming altogether? Let us know in the comments below!