Dutch army makes progress with Training Data Exploitation project

The dashboard of the Cervus Defence Xcalibr marksmanship analysis tool, showing the analysis of the effect of suppressive fire correlated with movement during live-fire and manoeuvre training. (Cervus)

The Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) is developing a Training Data Exploitation (TDX) system and is midway through the second stage of the project, TDX-2, Janes has learnt.

Speaking at the 2025 Defence Simulation Education and Training (DSET) conference held in Bristol from 8 to 10 July, Major Sander Cruiming, senior staff officer knowledge, innovation and policy, RNLA Simulation Centre for Land Warfare, said that TDX-2 is a two-year concept development and experimentation project that builds on a short earlier project conducted in 2018.

He explained that the aim of the project is to investigate how data analytics can be implemented as a persistent capability in the RNLA's unit readiness training processes, as well as assessing the technical state of its simulators for data analytics, developing the requirements for a data export and storage infrastructure and giving the training support organisation early experience with data analytics.

Improving feedback

Maj Cruiming identified specific areas on which the project has focused. He said that the quality of after-action review (AAR) needed to be improved, as it too often concentrated on snapshot events and ignored continuing activity, with that data being discarded. There was also a need to increase monitoring at unit level and across units over an extended period in order to identify trends; to “see if they are following doctrine and if it works”, he said; and to identify gaps or shortfalls in training through data visualisation.