Wars put sharper focus on simulated training - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Wars put sharper focus on simulated training

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. — Simulators, some right off the shelf, are giving special operations student pilots the training that they can’t get in the air and saving money to boot, instructors here say.

The 19th Special Operations Squadron, Air Force Special Operations Command’s training unit, already has six simulators and plans to buy another one next year to help accommodate its growing mission.

In the past year, the 19th has added training programs for the PC-12 and the U-28, both small single-prop airplanes, besides teaching airmen to fly the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and special mission C-130 variants, including the AC-130U Spooky gunship. The 19th also helps the 6th Special Operations Squadron train its combat aviation advisers, whose job is to teach foreign air forces.

“It’s certainly been busy here. There have been a lot of firsts for the 19th since I’ve gotten here,” said Lt. Col. Dagvin Anderson, an MC-130H Combat Talon II pilot who became the 19th’s commander in mid-2009.

Anderson and his instructors have not only embraced interactive training for pilots but for maintainers and joint terminal air controllers, as well.

An example of just how advanced the technology is occurred this spring when JTACs at two bases called in airstrikes to pilots at different locations, one in a plane and the other in a simulator.

A JTAC at Fort Bragg, N.C., called in an airstrike to a pilot flying over a training range at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and a JTAC on the Eglin training range called in an airstrike to a pilot in a simulator here.

The airstrikes, the first called in from such distances during an exercise, show that simulators can be more realistic than training flights — especially during wartime.

“With deployment tempos what they are, we just can’t get all the assets out there on the training range for the students,” Anderson said. “But I can incorporate A-10s and weather and all sorts of things when the students are in the simulators.”

Surprisingly, not all of the simulators are state of the art. The 19th turned to an off-the-shelf Microsoft Flight Simulator for student pilots learning the PC-12’s instruments and gauges.

“We were wasting sometimes an hour or an hour and a half with guys just trying to figure out the buttonology,” said Maj. Mike Lee, a 5th Special Operations Squadron Reserve pilot and a contracted instructor for the 19th. “Now they can just do it in here.”

The new pilots sit in a simulator that has a basic aviation yoke, three screens showing the instruments and another screen simulating the flight.

“Students didn’t like it at first because they wanted to be in the plane, but then we got this simulator — the HotSeat Chassis, which cost about $10,000 with all the pedals — and they all wanted to come here and use it,” Anderson said.

By teaching the basics in the simulator, the service saves $1,000 per flight hour, he said.

“That simulator paid for itself in two months,” Anderson said. In all, simulators save the 19th about $3 million a year.

Despite the savings and the technological advances, Anderson said he has a “high concern” that the military as a whole has become too dependent on computer-based training — especially Microsoft PowerPoint, which he described as a “slide carousel.” The Navy, for example, last year found that sailors who did much of their training on computers were less prepared than their counterparts who did their training on ships.

Anderson is able to allay his misgivings about the 19th’s computer-based training because of its high level of interactivity. The programs allow the students to take their work home on laptops as well as inform the instructors how long their students are studying.

“It helps us know if a student is … working really hard and just not getting it or if he studied for 30 minutes over the weekend,” he said. “It helps tell us even more about the student and his or her work habits.”

Anderson understands the value of learning by doing but also knows training squadrons must use technology.

“The technology is finally catching up to what we envisioned it could be so it’s a very exciting time right now to be here and see it all come together,” he said.