Portable Practice at Sea:
Revolutionizing Naval readiness
with VR and handheld gaming
Challenge
The fleet is stretched thin, short on people and short on recent, hands-on practice. Crews are operating at 84% manning. Classroom training is expensive, infrequent, and with a steep forgetting curve; congestion alone costs roughly $400 million a year. Even after a $1 billion push for Ready Relevant Learning, the fleet still needs training at the point of need: ashore, afloat, and submerged.
Solution
Navy
To address this decades-old challenge, Gronstedt Group and the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWCTSD) launched Mobile–Navy Enhanced Simulation for Training (Mobile NEST), a forward-deployed program that puts portable, hands-on simulations directly in Sailors’ hands. Together, we developed shipboard simulators on stand-alone VR headsets, letting technicians drill every step of a maintenance procedure until it’s locked in as muscle memory. The same content also runs on a Nintendo Switch–style handheld gaming PC, turning downtime into learning time and mess halls into classrooms as Sailors practice and rehearse skills anytime, anywhere. Working under an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), we’re evolving the schoolhouse-based Multipurpose Reconfigurable Training System 3D (MRTS 3D ® ) into a shipboard solution that delivers mission-critical training to the fleet.
Why it matters
Mobile-NEST shows what a nimble industry partner and a visionary Navy team can achieve: forward-deployed training that fits life at sea for a generation of Sailors reared on video games.
Results
The training received perfect user test scores, with 96% of Sailors rating the handheld trainer good-to-excellent and all users mastering the controls within minutes. By expanding access to immersive, self-paced practice across mobile VR and handhelds, the approach can trim hundreds of millions in training costs while accelerating readiness across the fleet.
FedTech Magazine spotlighted the shipboard 3D approach, and our presentation won Best Paper at IT²EC 2025.
Recognition
