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?"

Comments

No, it's really not.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No, it's really not.

[CRC'99]

For the record, I'm a military aviator, and I've got plenty of experience in both sims and the actual aircraft.

For the record, I'm a commercial pilot.

Simulators have their place - but it is certainly nowhere near the experience as a real aircraft. Speaking from a commercial background, simulators are great at two things:
1) Procedure
2) Techniques

Simulators are great in showing pilots how things work. Want to know what to expect in a fogged in approach to an airport and are learning how to use the ILS etc? A simulator is *great* in this role. You can do things in this combo that are GREAT for education. Does it come anywhere close to the real thing? Hell no.

The other thing that simulators excel at is teaching things such as instrument scans - basically train you to keep an eye on all your instruments at the same time by developing an effective scan of them. No pilot flying on instruments will use a single instrument - flying is very complex and cannot be done like this. An effective instrument scan (A/H -> Airspeed -> A/H -> Altitude -> A/H -> VSI -> A/H -> DG etc) is very hard to grasp when first starting - and it is the bread and butter that keeps pilots alive when the weather is starting to deteriorate or you start to fly faster and bigger aircraft.

Your standard 737 pilot will probably spend about 15 minutes out of every flight looking out the windows. The rest is monitoring instrumentation. I cannot understate how important this skill is - and simulators are perfect at developing those skills.

So are simulators replacement for a real aircraft though? Nowhere near. Simulators should be treated as an addition to inflight training - not as a replacement for it.

Re:No, it's really not.

[CRC'99]

Oh, and I forgot to include this link in my response above...

Simulator training flaws tied to airline crashes:
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/2010-08-31-1Acockpits31_ST_N.htm