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Royal Canadian Air Force Sees More Sims In the Future of Fighter Pilot Training
dakohli writes "Currently, Canadian Fighter Pilots spend about 20% of their 'stick' time in Simulators. RCAF General Blondin states that this will rise to 50/50 in the future. The article goes on to state that the U.S. Army is moving in this direction, although the U.S. Air Force is a little more skeptical. Aircraft are expensive to fly, and if the fidelity of a simulator is good enough then perhaps real pilots will spend even less time actually in the air. Slashdotters, do you think that this will actually make recruiting pilots more difficult, or is it a sign of the things to come beyond Military Aviation?"
Good one, hoser.
rewriting history since 2109
The fidelity is already there. Flight time in the sim is nearly as good as the real thing, especially considering when you are up on a motion platform.
The sims are great for procedure training since you can simulate failures which would be expensive or impossible to simulate in a real aircraft. More sim time = less cash spent on keeping the real aircraft in the air but with the same amount (or more) experience for the pilot being retained.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
In a decade or two, most of them will be flying drones anyway.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Why not self flying aircraft? The human is the weakest link in the chain.
the USAFs F-22 and upcoming F-35 both only come in single seat versions... there is no tutor flights, you go from sim to solo. If a sim can train a pilot who has never flown a F-22 or F-35 to fly one... why not keep pilots sharp for cheaper. I know the RCAF will let pilots take CF-18s 'home' (to an airport near their home), just to keep flight hours up. All the fuel, wear, and maintenance on the jet costs a lot, just for some stick time.
Take off! To my great white north... I never realized as a Canuck how many times I say eh!
I live in Canada. The only people who are dangerous are the idiots south of the border. North? Polar bears. And they're drowning. East? Greenland. Yeah. I'm terrified of the Greenland invaders. West? More of the same idiots from south of the border. (Not everyone south of the border is an idiot. It just seems that way sometimes. Like electing George W Bush to anything beyond dog catcher.) So, really, the only real threat to Canada comes from the country that supplies our military gear. So, if we ever got into a war with them, I kind of doubt we'll be getting replacement parts any time soon. Canada has no business getting involved with the imperialist programme of the USA and its lapdog the UK. It's bad enough we're a colony to both of them...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Wow... First time I've seen a callout to 2 PPCLI over Kapyong. Definitely a high point in Canadian military history.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
"make recruiting pilots more difficult"?
So, [gender neutral diminutive term], do you want to kill people for a living? Do you not care if you can't tell the difference between when you're *really* killing people, or when you're just doing it in sim? Does the fact you'll sometimes really be killing people make up for only getting paid $25k? Boy, do we have the job for you!
Meanwhile, on the rare occasions Canadians (or whatever other country you're from) actually feel like their country/way of life/etc is under meaningful threat, they'll volunteer to do it. My grandfather and great grandfather did; I would if I felt there was a real need..
Fuck peacetime overspending on the military. The US now spends more on "defense" than the next 17 largest spenders put together (or spends more than every other country on earth put together, depending on how you calculate it). I really don't give a shit if imperial expansion sucks so badly that we can't even get poor people to sign up any more.
Simulators can be very useful for pilot training. However their training value varies greatly depending on the task to be performed. Things relating to standard procedures and corrective actions for unforeseen events may be more useful, things related to air combat maneuvering (ACM) less so. Certainly ACM can be taught at an academic level in a simulator, learning the mechanics of a particular maneuver, being able to replay things from different vantage points, including your opponents. However the experience of actually feeling the g-forces during ACM is very important. Learning/practicing proper technique for maintaining consciousness, learning your personal limits, etc need actual flight time and the skills developed during this flight time are perishable. G-forces are also another input your brain learns to use. With experience a pilot can estimate how many degrees they have turned based on g-force and time, "that feels like 90 degrees", its just another thing that contributes to situational awareness and may negate the need to check a compass or external reference point. Handy if you have a more pressing thing to do.
For the record, I'm a military aviator, and I've got plenty of experience in both sims and the actual aircraft.
For some platforms, yes, the sims are just fine. Less dynamic platforms (i.e. helicopters, big wing) work just fine with full motion platforms. It will never be "perfect." Many of the imperfections manifest in ways that are inherent in simplified programming, i.e. actually modeling fluid dynamics for how the jet handles with failed systems vs. just hard coding that things "will" or "wont" work at certain airspeeds.
For tactical aircraft, however, there is absolutely no comparison. Yes, basic flight operations (taking off, landing, navigating) can be done relatively decently, but tactical flying (g-force, sun blind spots, etc) cannot be replicated in anything remotely resembling our current simulators.
Not to mention that most tactical simulators dont include motion. A "full motion" sim can't replicate more than 1.0 G in any given direction, much less a sustained 5g pull. The technology simply doesn't exist.
So do simulators have their uses? Absolutely. But there is no substitute for real flight time, and until we get some Star Trek -esque technology at our disposal, there won't be.
Do they mean a 5x increase of time spent in simulators, with the same "real" flight time as now?
At the other end, do they mean a 5-fold decrease in "real" flight time?
Because it could mean anything in between...
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
I suspect it will mean more time in a sim yes, but largely due to the increased flight time.
I.e., i don't see them cutting down on real fly time a huge amount, but the improved sim fidelity will enable more training on tactics, we with the same budget.
For a combat pilot, combat tactics and avionics training are just as important as actual aircraft handling, and those things can be taught in the simulator pretty well.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
A lot of sim time may not make it difficult to recruit pilots....it WILL make it difficult to keep them alive and able to win in both training and combat missions.
I have over 1,200 hrs in the F-4 Phantom and probably 500+ hours in simulators.
Even if a sim has a 100% accurate visual environment and simulates the aircraft systems perfectly, it can not simulate the physical environment (mostly the G's) of flying a training or combat mission. A real two hour mission in a fighter is roughly equivalent to lifting head, hand and foot weights in a phone booth on a hot, sunny day while doing a life-or-death crossword puzzle (one mistake and someone, probably you, dies) and the phone booth is juggled by a demented fork lift operator.
Think of this...at 6Gs (a normal hard turn...a really hard turn, like you mean it, is more like 7 - 9 Gs) your head + helmet weighs between 50 and 60 pounds. So climb into a small car on a hot day with 4 bowling balls (or that much weight) strapped to your head. Then drive along at 200 MPH down an empty Interstate and, while driving, turn and watch carefully some idiot with a large gun that is chasing you (also presumably in a car doing 200 MPH). An old saying in the fighter business is "lose sight...lose fight". So you MUST keep that idiot in sight while dealing with your 50 + pound head AND driving down the road dodging the idiot AND oh yes, get someone on a cell phone to talk to. Make sure you talk "hands free" of course. ;-)
Sims are GREAT for teaching aircraft systems, procedures and how to deal with emergencies. However, the harsh physical environment of flying a fighter mission is something that is not going to be simulated any time soon and you have to experience it, and often, in order to teach and remind your body and mind how to cope with it.
"Microsoft Goose Simulator 2014"
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Considering the next generation of high-performance aircraft will quite possibly be unmanned, this might not be such a bad idea.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well as I understand it Princess Pat's Regiment were of a similar standard to the average good Canadian infantryman at the time. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time and saved Seoul from falling to the Chinese and potentially stopped the UN from losing the Korean war. Not bad for a night's work.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Canada's military spending ranked 14th in the world in 2012. There are 180 nations in the world that spend less on their militaries - hardly chronically underfunded. Canadian soldiers are dedicated and extremely hard working; your attempt to slander the present day Canadian Forces because of an event that occurred 20 years ago is ridiculous. We are not proud that two Canadian soldiers beat a teenager to death in Somalia in 1993, but they don't represent the 115,000 active and reserve personnel in today's CF in any way, shape or form.
From what I've read elsewhere, Canada's current Hornets cost approximately $10K per hour to operate, while their replacement, the F-35, has been estimated to cost over $30K per hour. With the F-35 costing so much more to operate, increased simulator hours for training become the obvious move. The alternative is under trained or unqualified pilots at the controls of $100m+ aircraft.
Most pilots want to be up in the actual sky, not in a simulation. Thus, if simulators are used more, at least rotate often between ground and sky so that the pilot gets the real deal often enough to keep their interest. Don't go for months of training with only simulations.
Table-ized A.I.
HMCS Chicoutimi.
Nuff said.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Sounds like you know WTF you're talking about. Those of us with zero combat hours ought to listen to you.
I've only flown at 60 knots, 1/10th the speed of a combat aircraft, and noone was shooting at me. A sim couldn't prepare me for that, an ultralight. Flying almost straight down at the ground (it seems) from 2000 feet up and keeping your noise pointed at the ground until a few seconds before you hit, without freaking out requires more than pretending on a computer screen. That's in a $2,500 plane that goes 65 mph and the sim can't replicate it. I can't imagine what it's like to be a combat aviator, but I'm pretty damn sure playing an expensive video game isn't proper preparation!
I would not bring up one unfortunate incident as a standard of Canadian conduct, especially in comparison to the US forces. We're only 'underfunded' and 'unsupported' in the viewpoint of a country that needs a huge army to bully every one with.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
So what you're saying is flying jets is awesome, right?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Simple solution...to prevent jamming... put the simulator... inside the drone!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I'm a private pilot with a multi-engine rating. Simulators seem to be a good way to rehearse cockpit procedures, but unless they figure out a way to simulate g-forces, that's about the limit of their usefulness. Simulating a spin recovery procedure is one thing, doing it for real with a two- or three-g load from the spin is another. With that said, I don't think commercial and military pilots are going to have a viable career field for much longer. Military pilots are already being replaced by drone operators, and I think the rate of replacement is going to accelerate if the drone program keeps posting the kind of successes it has enjoyed so far. Unmanned vehicles seem to be the future of military aviation. Commercial pilots will probably last longer, because commercial airlines have to convince a skeptical public that airliners are going to be as safe with a computer at the stick as they are right now with a human. Realistically, commercial pilots have a hand on the stick only during takeoffs and landings, but all modern heavies can land and take off under autopilot, and have been able to for about thirty years. IIRC, a Douglas Skymaster made a transatlantic flight completely on autopilot, including the take-off and landing, even farther back than that (late 1940s? have to google that) so the technology is definitely out there. IMHO, pilots are still in commercial cockpits (and will be there for a while) because the paying public wants them there, not because they need to be there.
It was not one isolated incident. It was the final and most extreme of a long series of incidents. Your commandos were totally unprepared, had no training for that social/political environment and had insufficient support. It was, when seen in retrospect, almost inevitable.
After the parliamentary inquiry things did improve somewhat but to this day whenever I hear that my nation's forces have been deployed alongside Canadian forces I get an uneasy feeling that doesn't go away until the deployment is over.
I believe that the root cause of the problem is that Canada's defense is too important to the US for them to allow it to stay in Canadian hands.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
The Big Picture: Salute To The Canadian Army
2 PPCLI on parade, with Brigadier Gault in attendance.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What were the circumstances of the death? were they extensively provoked? soldiers don't usually just beat people to death for no reason - unless they are drunk. It would interesting to hear the facts of this case rather than possibly just slandering two soldiers without considering mitigating factors.
The Canadian soldiers were being stolen from every night, at first in an ad hoc way, then later on a systemic basis. These were reportedly the best soldiers in the Canadian army but they had been trained for war and not dealing with hordes of pilfering children. The soldiers got wound up so tight that they would catch kids and beat them. Later they started to torture them. Eventually one of the kids died. Somalia brought out the worst in a lot of the armies there and this behaviour was by no means restricted to the Canadian troops.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
We're only 'underfunded' and 'unsupported' in the viewpoint of a country that needs a huge army to bully every one with.
Don't worry, the Soviet Army is gone now. Thankfully NATO was able to outlast the whole rotten system of militant, milatarized, oppressive Soviet Communism.
And what a nasty giant they were back in the day too.
Soviet Military Doctrine
Soviet ground forces are composed of more than two hundred divisions, all mechanized, and organized under army, front and high commands in at least five theaters of military operations. They possess more than 53,000 main battle tanks, 48,000 tubes of artillery, mortars and multiple-rocket launchers, 4,600 surface-to-air missiles and 4,500 helicopters.
The air forces include more than 4,900 tactical aircraft. Air defense forces have an additional 1,760 interceptor aircraft, 9,000 surface-to-air missile launchers, and 10,000 warning systems including satellites, radars and air surveillance systems. Under the terms of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the worldâ(TM)s only ABM system has been deployed around Moscow.
The Soviet navy has 360 attack and cruise missile submarines, 274 principal surface combatants, and its own air arm of 390 bombers and 195 fighter aircraft.
After the Soviet Union fell, the US was able to cut its defense spending, which had been falling over time anyway. Even with the cuts, the US was subsidizing Western Europe's defense.
NATO BURDENSHARING AFTER ENLARGEMENT
Or were you thinking of someone else? If so, could you be more specific? It is a little hard to reconcile international relations with playground rhetoric. It is made even more difficult by the tendency of some people to forget who their friends are.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Not really... but if you think any latin word makes you look smart, go ahead...
I believe that the root cause of the problem is that Canada's defense is too important to the US for them to allow it to stay in Canadian hands.
Then you believe nonsense. Canada is a soverign nation that governs itself and runs its own military.
...whenever I hear that my nation's forces have been deployed alongside Canadian forces I get an uneasy feeling that doesn't go away until the deployment is over.
If that is true, then you may want to see a doctor or other mental health professional as you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder, or perhaps some other form of mental illness. Although your problem may not be curable, your symptoms may be treatable to allow you to go on with life in a world with Canadians (and the Canadian military) in it.
The tragedy of canuckophobia
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There are Traffic Control enthusiasts out there too, whole log in solely to give directions to the Flight enthusiasts. Its a very strange hobby in my opinion but I can see how it might be fun :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Until they all go on virtual strike and a political enthusiast logs in as the President and fires them all.
Oh boo hoo. The big bad communists made us spend all our money on weapons.
Then, after the boogeyman went away... the US still spends more money than anyone else, in fact an amount similar to everyone else combined.
Who will you blame for that?
Under the terms of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the world's only ABM system has been deployed around Moscow.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The soviets pick their most populous city to defend - Meanwhile, the US picks a base in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota. Need I remind you who left the treaty, also.
Sent from my PDP-11
They were members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, and I think mostly because of this event, the CAB was disbanded thereafter.
I knew a fair number of guys in the Airborne and while they were admittedly gungho, they were only usually bad when in large groups. Individually they were nice guys for the most part. In groups their morale and intensity got them a little riled up shall we say.
There is no excuse for what happened in Somalia mind you. Every army and every unit has its bad eggs, and the Airborne attracted quite a few of them I suppose.
I suspect a lot of the best members of the Airborne - those who were not just returned to their units of origin - ended up in JTF2.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Some people think that if you don't outspend the rest of the world combined, that you are underfunded.
Learn to love Alaska
I knew a fair number of guys in the Airborne and while they were admittedly gungho, they were only usually bad when in large groups. Individually they were nice guys for the most part. In groups their morale and intensity got them a little riled up shall we say.
If they were bad in groups then they were bad individually, you just didn't notice.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Being paid to fly in a really fancy simulation game... Yes, they will find plenty of recruits. :-)
Except that's not very interesting... it seems there's a lot of grinding.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
This is the Canadian armed forces who are so chronically underfunded and undersupported by their government that their submarines blow up on their remaidened voyage, that their special forces capture and torture to death children caught stealing from their base in Somalia.
Well, afterwards they can extend the experience to Mounties, I hear they ride some aircrafts too. ... horses are pretty expensive too; maybe some sims would lower the pressure on the budget.
And, you know?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
so... you fly for Iranians?
simulator time is still better than nothing, even with shitty simulator(ask russians).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You can't talk about this incident without mentioning the Canadian response:
We disbanded the regiment involved in disgrace.
The Somalia incident was unquestionably a low point in Canadian Army history, no doubt about it. And it revealed a systemic problem within that particular unit that, as you stated, had been around for a very long time. But our response was drastic - shut down the unit, imprison the worst offenders, fire a slew of them, and break up the ones worth saving into other units spread across the country. A very powerful message was sent to every single Canadian soldier and we all got it - there will be consequences for your actions bigger than just you.
I am ashamed of the actions of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia - but I am justifiably proud of my government's reaction to it. And not just me - our allies constantly tell us how impressed (Americans tend to say "shocked") they are about just how seriously we took that incident.
What nation are you from?
DG
You would not believe how much time is wasted flying around waiting to train. Your training area is rarely near your airfield. You fly a few hours, then wait until other planes take turns doing the mission. You then roll in and perform the training mission, then quickly exit so someone else can. Now, you do need to learn to take off, fly long distances and land, but it is not useful training when you are focused on another mission. With the simulator, you can start in mid air and begin the mission right away. It is not a replacement for actual flying, but you can get up to speed in the simulator prior to flying the mission, and keep sharp when flying isn't practicle.
Yes, I know that looks like more than 100%. As pointed out more eloquently by real military pilots, they need real flight experience. Rather than *replace* the real experience with simulation, use the lowered cost of simulation to increase the *total* time spent in training, and ensure that they can have some training every day to be in peak form, the same way most pro athletes train every day. If that's too much time for people to handle (because I don't really know how much time they spend now), lower the real time only part of the way. I would certainly prefer that there were never a shot fired in anger; at the same time I also want my team optimally prepared for whatever they need to do.
Considering that BOTH US and Canadian governments are poised to buy jets that cost between 100-200M a pop, is it really coming as a surprise that pilots will be training with more sim time VS taking the caddy out for a spin?
Sure there are trainer jets and the like, however there are only so many of these, and they are old and getting older. Our F22 are hellish to maintain or so I hear and require a huge expense in maintiance hours for every hour of actual flight time.
So yeah less more expensive jets equals more flight simulator for pilots.
That said, you can already see that the US is expending more and more in the terms of drones, where I don't believe Canada has yet. I suspect that this will be the next logical platform that Canada will emulate. I can't see Canada ever aquiring an AC, however perhaps a "drone ship" might be something worth doing.
Canada will continue to support training exercises such as Maple Flag: The number of personnel at CFB Cold Lake effectively doubles while the exercise is being conducted, with approximately 5,000 pilots and support crews from Canada and its Allies. In addition think about the evolution of air combat and the advent of the drones. Training pilots via simulator leads to an easier transition to unmanned fighters. One comment about simulators is that they don't allow the pilot to experience the G's involved in the maneuvers. Easy enough to fix by taking the fighter out of the cockpit permanently.
Australia.
Yes, the Canadian government's response was swift and effective and I thought at the time that they had turned things around. But lo and behold it turns out that the Canadian government thought the root cause of the problem was in the military while it was really in the government itself trying to do too much with the Defence allocation, spending on the wrong things, buying the right things the wrong way. The military does what the government tells it to and until the Canadian government gets its defence act together the Canadian military will always have one hand tied behind its back.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Oh. My bad. Guess i'd better tell my pilot friend who told me about it that he's mistaken ;)
http://www.xkcd.com/354/