Augmented reality (AR) is changing the way that the Department of Defense (DoD) workforce and the warfighter are communicating, training, and providing care. When AR is paired with 5G, it can provide many benefits for the DoD, including improving telehealth, remote support, and better overall workflows capabilities.

When it comes to workforce training, these types of AR-enabled solutions could also enhance remote learning and connectivity, as well as provide access to step-by-step workflow instructions – essentially in real-time. Enterprise use cases around military manufacturing and equipment repairing are becoming more common. And, future use cases are emerging around visual analytics, edge computing, as well as simulated battlefields.

These were the key themes in the second part of our 5G Use Cases for the DoD podcast on Augmented Reality Workforce Training, where Karl Dahlin, AR/VR Product Leader, Wireless, Edge, and IoT Solutions at Verizon; and Matt Margolis, Director of Business Development and Strategic Relationships at Vuzix, discuss this topic further.

“The DoD has some unique challenges,” said Dahlin. “A big one is dealing with the notion of compressed time. They have less time to get people trained so how they enable them to have access to training materials all the time is super important. This is where augmented reality comes in – by giving them the ability to easily reference things and integrate it while they are doing their job. Before it could take a year to train a soldier. Now it’s been whittled down to a few weeks. It’s become much more efficient how the training is done.”

Listen to the full podcast below:

Interested in listening to the other parts of the series? You can do that here.