KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. — A new Air Force simulation is allowing Predator drone pilots, sensor operators and imagery analysts to fight in the Air Force’s Virtual Flag and other training exercises.
Built by SDS International Inc., the PC-based MQ-1B simulator, called the Remotely Operated Vehicle Adaptable Training/Tracking System, or ROVATTS, replicates Predator ground control station operations and presents crews with video game-quality footage of scenarios. Using a joystick, operators can steer the sensor ball and move the virtual camera in a 360-degree view of the environment. They can zoom in on the feed to identify people and vehicles. The imagery is then fed to the analysts as it would be in real-world operations.
The analysts are linked into the Air Force’s intelligence network, the distributed common ground station, or DCGS. They rarely have the opportunity to interface in person with the Predator sensor operators. In combat operations, the two parties communicate mainly via messaging or voice, if at all.
“Training together in the same facility will pay dividends,” says Kristi Farmer, an operations research analyst for Scientific Research Corp., a contractor here at the distributed mission operations center. “For them to be face-to-face is huge,” she adds.
But the high operations tempo of the two wars means that both the Predator crews and the analysts are not always available to participate in exercises at the DMOC.
“The biggest challenge is to get people down here,” says Farmer.
Simulation exercises such as the virtual flags often are the only tests that DCGS personnel-in-training receive before they report for duty.
“As soon as they graduate, they get thrown into operations,” says Capt. Custer Delostrinos of the 705th Combat Training Squadron.
“This is just a baby step and we’re thinking of expanding it into something much larger,” he says.
Predator operators will receive additional training in strike coordination and reconnaissance; personnel recovery; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; time-sensitive targeting/dynamic targeting; and close-air support.
Current operators from the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, which flies the MQ-1B Predator and MQ-9 Reaper from Creech Air Force Base, Nev., have provided input on the virtual training devices and scenarios.
The DMOC has worked with the Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation and the Army’s Redstone Arsenal to upgrade the sensor displays and terrain databases. “That partnership has served us well,” says Lt. Col. Brynt Query, chief of distributed mission operations integration and senior exercise director for the 505th Distributed Warfare Group.
Officials plan to develop the ROVATTS next year into a full replication of a Predator console that can accommodate two pilots and two sensor operators. The simulation will embed mission-planning systems such as the Portable Flight Planning System/Falcon View, as well as chat functionality and datalink. Query says that the simulation may eventually have the capability to operate in classified environments.
The DMOC plans to integrate its training systems with the Predator squadrons being established at Holloman Air Force Base, officials say.
“Anything that gets people thinking about how to use the capability that we bring to the fight, I think, is a great thing,” says Col. Chris Chambliss, commander of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing.