The SCIPIO requirement originates in a major advanced study launched by the French MoD (DGA, the procurement agency, and Army operational research centre) at the turn of the century to explore available technologies for Army distributed training to combat operations on the digitized battlespace, and its impact on doctrine. As the requirement evolved to a full command training capability, Thales and MASA-SCI won the project over EADS and other local simulation providers for their pragmatic solution and the complementarity of the skills arrayed, between C4I system integration, decision modeling and commander stimulation.
SCIPIO emphasizes the reduction of preparation and training resources, prepares Army units to the use of command & control information systems, and introduces advanced simulation software agents, such as decision models to animate subordinated tactical units, offering faithful replication of tactical decision-making and manoeuvre for companies and below. These agents follow doctrine and develop automated situational awareness in their synthetic environment (terrain, enemy, mission and resources).
A key requirement was also to prepare SCIPIO, initially designed for conventional, high intensity warfare, to encompass new operational requirements, such as operations other than war and asymmetric warfare in complex, mostly urban, environments. Today, Thales has been retained to enhance SCIPIO for operations at a lower tactical level in the full scope of combined, digitised Army operations over the current peace-crisis-war continuum.