AFRL seeks to improve training, save lives with Live-Virtual-Constructive concept

  • Published
  • By John Schutte
  • Human Effectiveness Directorate
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Two F-16s from the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., received target coordinates and banked southeastward over the desert sands into their attack, dropping ordnance precisely as requested onto enemy mortar positions. 

But in this case, the enemy positions were coordinates at the Barry M. Goldwater Range Complex in southern Arizona, and the close air support was called in by a joint terminal attack controller lying on the floor of a virtual training system at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference in Orlando, Fla. 

Researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate were demonstrating a real-time, real-world Live-Virtual-Constructive  training capability they hope will someday improve the quality and efficiency of training not only for JTACs--Air Force troops operating within Army units to identify targets and coordinate close air support--but for fighter pilots and the Air Support Operations Centers personnel who execute the battle plans developed at the Air and Space Operations Centers. 

The LVC training research is being conducted by the AFRL/RH Warfighter Readiness Research Division located in Mesa, Ariz., and scheduled to move to AFRL's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base headquarters by 2011.
 
The training technology displayed November 27-28 at I/ITSEC linked two F-16s in flight over Arizona with two high-fidelity F-16 simulators and a new 5-meter-diameter proof-of-concept immersive simulation environment, called the Joint Terminal Attack Control Training and Rehearsal System, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. 

Staff Sergeant Dennis Krouse of the 9TH Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Hood, Texas--a 28-year-old JTAC with five tours of duty in Iraq totaling about 23 months--became involved with the LVC project when AFRL sought inputs from warfighters with JTAC experience.
 
Sgt. Krouse directed close air support from the JTAC training system just as he did from the ground in Iraq and said "it's as close to the real thing as you can get." 

The JTAC trainer's high resolution and accurate displays--the database includes critical fighter aircraft flight profiles needed to gauge the timing of weapons launch--makes it a much more realistic training tool than the system he used prior to his deployments, Sgt. Krouse said.
 
Researchers want Air Force officials to understand the value of this one-of-a-kind system, which would fill-in existing gaps in training and usher in a new military training philosophy emphasizing an individual's unique training needs. 

Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard is an AFRL contractor at the Mesa site and an Air Force Reserve F-16 pilot whose eight-person team provides AFRL with a fighter pilot's perspective for system development and testing. He said military training needs to be geared more toward identifying competencies and strengthening an individual's known weaknesses. 

"All pilots of a given age and experience level in the entire Air Force, including active duty, Reserve and Guard, have the exact same training requirements," Rickard said. "We have to do so many of a certain types of missions each year but it has nothing to do with how good we are at those missions." 

Mission Essential Competencies, or MECs, are a concept created by AFRL/RHA in collaboration with Air Combat Command (ACC) to give the Air Force the ability to define and measure competencies for warfighters in the live and virtual environments they use for operations and training. The Air Force has adopted that methodology as a means of routinely tracking mission performance and training needs.
 
Now, the LVC concept seeks to apply this competency-based training methodology to live fighter cockpits so researchers can define, measure and analyze the competencies of pilots actively engaged in flying an aircraft. 

"I can't get live data out of an airplane like I can get out of a simulator because it wasn't designed to do that, and the data I do get only exists for a day because the pilot uses the tape or DVR again the next day," Rickard said. 

AFRL is teamed with range instrumentation and architecture software systems developer Cubic Defense Applications under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to provide the interface between aircraft and ground-based systems, according to Dr. Winston "Wink" Bennett, principal scientist for training systems and performance assessment at AFRL/RHA. 

Data gathered from aircraft would be combined with simulator and classroom data in an all-encompassing training database from which each warfighter would construct a training plan tailored to his or her strengths and weaknesses.
 
"We'll have a record of everything we've done and can see over time how fast our skills have improved and in what skills more training is needed," Rickard said. "Then we can start to diverge from all having the same training plan to having a plan that's specifically designed for each person." 

The key is "to make a jet act like a simulator" in terms of more realistic tactical scenarios, Rickard said, and The Boeing Company is taking steps toward doing just that, having modified and flown a company-owned F-15 with LVC technology onboard. 

AFRL plans to collaborate with Boeing under another CRADA to continue development of the aircraft training system. The AFRL/Boeing team also will collaboratively provide the Air Force with proof-of-concept for mission performance data-gathering and higher quality post-action data, as well as LVC lessons learned, Dr. Bennett said.
 
Dr. Bennett is optimistic the LVC concept will prove itself and the Air Force will ultimately fund the transition necessary to make it a standard training methodology. He states his own opinion of LVC's value to the warfighter in starkly simple terms:

 "Every one of those guys who gets better training is one less that might die in combat. I'm good with that."