The United States Army already had a foray into gaming with the controversial (and still playable) America’s Army, but now it’s getting serious. The Army has created a new unit dedicated to the development of training games and will spend $50 million over the next five years making combat games.

Lieutenant Colonel Gary Stephens is in charge of the Army’s new Project Executive Office — Simulation Training and Instrumentation. The new command is looking to modify commercially available software to use in training simulations.

A current Army training program, called DARWARS Ambush, is built off unspecified older code from a commercial game, but a newer model is needed that can be modded, for lack of a better term, to fit in with changing scenarios as military personnel train for different battle conditions.

This time around, the games will stay in-house; this is a training simulation, not a recruitment tool like America’s Army, so there won’t be a commerical release. Said Lt. Col. Stephens:

"We want to take advantage of that, but we don’t have the intent to become a competitor with the commercial gaming industry. We don’t have the intent or capability to be a commercial game house."

One of the key features the Army is looking for in its next training game is the ability to review game action once a player has finished. While Warthogs and the Spartan laser may not fit in with the Army’s training plans, Halo 3’s saved films feature seems to be just the sort of thing the Army is looking for.

While this new project is different, it’s worth noting that the other Army game, America’s Army, is still running strong (there’s even an Xbox 360 version), and the 3.0 update will feature the latest version of the Unreal Engine.