I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make.
Are you saying simulators are bad? I was a Mech infantryman for 8 years, but I’ve been out for five years now. The Bradley gunnery simulators were excellent to sharpen your skills before you went to the live-fire gunnery range. The multiple simulators (SIMNET) was a great way to practice command and control, fire control, issuing platoon and company fire commands, etc., SIMNET had the HUGE added bonus that if you screwed up, you could tell the computer guys to reset the simulation to just prior to where you screwed up.
We still went to the field PLENTY. Sure, there was an intensive pre-deployment trainup, but you can’t maintain that level of intensity for an extended period of time anyway.
As far as the Army adapting its doctrine, the current doctrine is changing as fast as they can print out new stuff. General Petraeus wrote a new manual on counterinsurgency. The Army has different doctrine for high intensity conflict (fighting another country’s army like we did in the invasion of Iraq) and low intensity conflict (what we’ve been doing since then).
As in the piece... Simulations are a great thing. However, in my opinion as a 19D (Recon Scout) and 11B (Infantry) for those that don’t know) Commanders of Combat Service Support (CSS) units and Non-Combat Arms MOS’s are relying to much on simulation training due to the ease and availability, and are not getting their troops out in the field. If you read the piece, it says in conjunction with, not soley. In Theater, there is no distinguishing of MOS’s anymore. Support Personnel are conduction Combat Patrols and are under trained. Historically, that has been the Grunts job based off of the MOS. Not anymore. Everyone is now a Grunt, regardless of MOS.