One of the most vexing problems in simulation-based military flight
trainers today is their failure to keep up with the technological
upgrades made to the “real” aircraft, industry and government
officials said.
Such disparity between the configurations of aircraft and trainers
is “a major challenge,” said Navy Capt. Rory H. Fisher,
program manager for aviation training at the Naval Air Systems Command.
During a recent interview, Fisher explained that tactical aircraft
are equipped with what is known as an “operational flight
program.” As modifications are made to the aircraft that affect
the mission computer, the operational flight program also changes.
But while changes in the aircraft typically are funded in the program’s
budget, that is not the case with the simulators. “That is
one of those things that are ‘free in the aircraft’
but not in the simulator,” said Fisher. “You have to
pay for the upgrades.
“You may need to re-host your computers or upgrade your visual
systems or upgrade your target projectors in order to get new capabilities
in the trainers,” he said. A simple engineering update, for
example, may cost $500,000 to incorporate into 50 aircraft, but
it may cost $5 million to put that engineering change in a simulator.
“Is that cost-effective? You have to figure that out.”
Cost-versus-capability tradeoffs in the Navy “are made all
the time,” said Fisher. “When you are limited in funding,
you have to make tough decisions.”
The Navy, meanwhile, is counting on breakthroughs in technology
to achieve lower-cost simulators, such as PC-based systems, which
“could fill some of the void,” Fisher said. “But
the fleet guys don’t want to hear that.” The typical
reaction of a Navy pilot, he said, is, “I didn’t join
the Navy to play a video game. I joined the Navy to fly an airplane.”
The lack of concurrency between the aircraft and the simulators
is an issue “the military struggles with,” said John
Lenyo, vice president for business development at BAE Systems Flight
Simulation and Training, in Tampa, Fla.
“They do not usually upgrade the simulators at the same time
the platform is upgraded,” he said in an interview. The reason
is that each side relies on “different kinds of money.”
The money used to upgrade airplanes comes from a different account
than the funds used for training. “They are trying to address
this problem with new platforms, such as Joint Strike Fighter or
the V-22 Osprey, where they are buying the trainer through the prime
contractor,” said Lenyo.
BAE has been working on solving the concurrency problem in the
C-130 J Hercules cargo aircraft trainer. The airplane is built by
Lockheed Martin Corporation. “Because they are the aircraft
prime, they have access to the aircraft data and they provide the
data to us so that we can deliver a concurrent simulator,”
said Lenyo.
To keep the simulator current, he said, BAE relies on a technique
known as stimulation. “We actually stimulate the aircraft’s
computers, avionics, black boxes to think that they are flying when
they are in the simulator.” The prime contractor controls
the software in the airplane, Lenyo explained. “We load the
operational flight programs into the simulator. Whenever Lockheed
makes a change to the aircraft, we can make a very rapid change
to the simulator.”
The “stimulation” of the avionics, black boxes and
computers means they are receiving the same signals that they would
get in the airplane, while flying, he added. “They are fooled
into thinking that they are at 20,000 feet over England, instead
of bolted to the floor in Tampa. ... It exactly matches the airplane.”
The Navy’s new F/A-18E/F Super Hornet flight trainers get
around the concurrency problem, because they are “software
upgradable,” said Gary Nesta, vice president for training
devices at L-3 Communications Link Simulation and Training division,
in Arlington, Texas. “We are not dependent on any aircraft
component for these simulators,” Nesta said in an interview.
The company was awarded a contract by the F/A-18 manufacturer, The
Boeing Company, to build the trainers.
“In the past, we used onboard avionics boxes, which are not
cost effective,” he said. “They require special power,
cooling. [In partnership with Boeing], we developed a mission computer
emulator so we can run the emulated avionics code with a general
purpose computer.” The upshot is that “we don’t
need the aircraft boxes any more,” Nesta said. “For
the displays, we have made simulated displays. It’s a simulated
COTS-based aircraft environment. We can make operational flight
training programs that get upgraded and installed more easily.”
If the capabilities of the aircraft are different from the capabilities
of the trainer, Fisher said, the trainer becomes “tactically
irrelevant.” That is an important consideration, he said,
when it comes to networking simulators. “If we are not going
to commit the funding to keep our simulators in the same configuration
as the aircraft, there is no reason to network them because they
won’t be interoperable and they won’t have tactical
relevance.”