Military Training Needs a Living Virtual World; Skyral Is Delivering It

Military training is entering a new era. With renewed urgency driven by NATO’s strategic direction and the UK’s Strategic Defence Review, Western armed forces are recognising that the next fight won’t just be about firepower, but about true readiness in a world of constant complexity.

Today, however, many forces still train in environments that fall short of that complexity. Civilian behaviour is rote and scripted. Infrastructure is static. Geopolitics play out based only on historical information and latent policies. These scenarios don’t talk back, and they don’t reflect our true world.

At Skyral, we believe that has to change.

Training in a Virtual World That Thinks, Feels, and Reacts

Skyral delivers a living, interconnected synthetic world  that reflects the way the real world actually behaves. We’ve built a platform that delivers a simulated, virtual world where forces operate alongside, and within, dynamic systems: social, political, digital, infrastructure. Not just red and blue dots moving on a map.

This isn’t just about modelling people, which is indeed extremely important. But rather, it’s about simulating a full-spectrum operating environment where humans, infrastructure, information, and events collide in unpredictable, realistic ways.

That includes:

• Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) that responds to disruption, degradation, or attack
• Civilian populations with evolving beliefs, allegiances, and sentiment
• Social media that propagates influence, sentiment, and dis/misinformation
• Economic systems and cyber environments that react to instability and stress
• Geopolitical scenarios that are emergent and ever-shifting

In other words, training technology now incorporates the full interplay of actors and assets—across land, air, sea, cyber, and space—with realism that mirrors today’s multidomain threats.

Our platform also doesn’t simulate events in isolation. It models cause and consequence at scale. That means personnel can:

• See how kinetic action impacts public sentiment over time
• Observe cascading failures in CNI due to cyber or physical attack
• Measure the effects of influence operations on adversary decision-making
• Plan and rehearse operations in an environment where information—and disinformation—flows just like in the real world

But such a shift in training technology adoption requires integration and openness. In other words: a platform approach.  Partners must be able to rapidly plug into a technology ecosystem, contributing new capabilities—from AI models to threat libraries—without rebuilding the entire simulation architecture.

We know a platform approach is the way forward for training, and indeed across other functions of the Defence landscape. It lowers costs, delivers innovation faster , enables best-in-class capability integration, and decreases latency when it comes to responding to emerging threats and new operational needs.

In short, users benefit from an always-improving virtual environment that reflects both technological and strategic evolution.

Enabling Decision Superiority

In a world of hybrid threats and grey zone operations, decision superiority will define success. So how can we ensure our fighting force is prepared enough to make decision superiority the edge in operations?

They must have the ability to train in environments that teach not just what to do, but how those decisions ripple through human, digital, and physical systems.

As Western forces pivot from counterinsurgency toward near-peer competition, they must train for uncertainty, influence, and interdependence.

Skyral is ready for that mission. We’re not just building simulations, we’re building a complete virtual world. One where defence personnel don’t just rehearse tactics, but engage with the full complexity of modern conflict across all domains.

Because in tomorrow’s operating environment, the battlespace won’t stop at the front line. And neither should training.