“We have the largest training gap in tactical aviation history in front of us,” said Lieutenant Colonel Kevin O’Rourke, 1 Group F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Training, U.S. Marine Corp (USMC). “We don’t have a lot of the things we need to train the force commander’s pilots to go to war—yet: simulators don’t have it; and the jet doesn’t have it. We have good things coming, but they are a few years down the road.”

O’Rourke was speaking at a session on Fifth Generation Training in a Contemporary Environment that ran on May 19th in alongside the ITEC Exhibition at London’s Excel Centre. He works with Squadron Leader Guy Lockwood, 1 Group Lightening Training SO2, UK Royal Air Force (RAF), to oversee pilot training development and assurance for the F-35.

The discussion was aimed at highlighting the huge step forward in capability that the F-35 potentially brings, while illustrating how difficult it currently is to train an increasing number of pilots to manage the threat and capability. “We said that waiting for a perfect solution to arrive would take decades and that the federated solution between users that is currently being driven forward is good for everyone.

“We see that there is tremendous opportunity for growth in F-35 training, both in the live and simulated environments,” suggested O’Rourke. An F-35 pilot is required “to manage a large display in the cockpit when under G and under stress.” This information needs to be collated in the right way and the information processed, all while probably in a non-permissive environment.”

Sq. Ldr. Lockwood, a qualified F-22 instructor pilot and flight examiner who was on exchange with the USAF’s 94th Fighter Squadron, said that they had tried to define the qualities necessary for an “Information Age” pilot. “We think it is someone who has the skills of his predecessors—with a few more added. The key skills will be in balancing priorities [provided by the sensors] and rebalancing them consistently and constantly throughout the mission to get the best from the aircraft.” Information dominance is only good if it leads to the best decisions being made, he added.

Relying on simulation to cover a training gap in the preparation of F-35 pilots could not be blindly accepted, argued Lockwood, who stated that they had examined the issue more objectively and had tried to “critically assess the training delta between what we need the Information Age pilot to execute [over time] and that we can execute right now.”

He said that core skills were required in a non-permissive environment: “The key between a good and great F-35 pilot will be prioritization. It is knowing when to look out of the window, fly the aircraft by feel and negate collision avoidance,” while continually processing, exploiting and sharing the information coming into the cockpit. “That will be the subject of weapon school papers for years to come,” he added.

Fifth Generation pilots will require broader skills in information management than those of the 4th Generation and that training with inherent extreme maneuvers cannot all be replicated in the simulator. “Working under G forces reduces your visual acuity and decision making capacity, which in turns affects your work rate.

Simulation versus Live

“When you get out of a simulator you aren’t sweating through your flight suit like you do when you get out of a jet,” said O’Rourke. While there is broad agreement that training will be split 50/50 between live flying and simulation to provide the greatest capacity for learning, the challenges of flying and fighting in non-permissive environments has got to be the focus, given much of the flying in the last decade has been in permissive environments.

Lockwood gave his vision of the ideal pilot: “I want a 300-hour guy who has had a year of seasoning on a squadron and has the decision-making capability of a 1,000-hour guy of yesteryear.”

By this he means that the pilot needs to be the right blend of youth with the appreciation of what the sensor technology can deliver, balanced against what someone with significant experience can deliver. The challenge, he said, was to instill that experience in much less time than it would take to earn through live flying alone: “We need a pilot who can look at a battlespace and know what to do instinctively because they have done it so many times. The challenge is training that into younger people.”

O’Rourke explained that in their analysis of the training requirements to produce a basis between simulator and live flying, they came to the conclusion that while the total balance for an F-35 pilot might be around 50/50, during times of training for lower operational requirements that may go to a 40/60 split in favor of simulation, but would be reversed when on operations to a 60/40 split in favor of live flying.

Returning to the need to manage information while flying in a non-permissive battlefield, O’Rourke said, “The F-35 will operate in the extended decision space afforded by the sanctuary offered by its stealth and sensor fusion. The pilots will share and prioritize information, then act. The pilot has a lot to do in the cockpit and has to be able to do this live with all the pressures.”

He keenly stressed that the newness of the aircraft meant that tactics were still under development and would continue to remain that way for some time: “tactics are very fluid; you may have to move from one to another very quickly.”

However, he said that the question remained about how the gap in training requirements could be measured and the current difficulty in training to all potential mission sets. Between operational and mission tasks, there were also hundreds of sub-tasks to be taught. “We have identified over 900 tasks and sub tasks that the pilot needs to train to. We have 85 mission tasks linked to central tasks; 300 emergency tasks and roughly 100 currency tasks.”

The volume of training tasks might be manageable initially, said O’Rourke, with pilots able to log around 1.5 hours during a sortie and a squadron logging around 3,000 hours of training per year. By 2025 there will be four or five squadrons in the UK with up to 250 F-35s, all competing for four simulators that aren’t linked, he said. They will also be competing to train in the same airspace and will need to be tested with Red Air. The question will arise about the lack of airspace in which to conduct such a volume of training that will meet and test the capabilities of the F-35s.

There is also the question of technical compatibility. “If I put a synthetic mission in a live-synthetic environment, will the synthetic unit react properly with the aircraft when they conduct training? Are the interactions there? We have to get this right. So we see training as a growth area and we need solutions.” He questioned whether the bar should be lower in terms of goals because all of the requirements could not be met.

Lockwood questioned whether today’s simulation, good as it is, could be immersive enough to replicate the JSF: “It is difficult to give simulation that is representative enough for the F-35 or even the F-22. It is tempting to look at video games and think that the technology exists to accurately replicate the sensors to provide that level of training. But truly immersive training for time and cost is exponential. There is a huge amount of complexity involved in both simulating the aircraft and the threat.”

The level of realism and accuracy of the feedback from any simulator becomes more complex when trying to replicate the F-35. “What if there is ambiguity where the threat reaction gives me false confidence or is too aggressive? We need to understand what level of realism is required,” said Lockwood, while also acknowledging that a “huge amount” could still be achieved in the simulator, such as training tactics. He said that simulators can deliver on defined training objectives over a precise number of days as they are not subject to the vagaries of the live environment.

His analysis was not intended to detract from the simulation system currently in place and he emphasized that, “the full motion simulator for the F-35 is awesome.” it was simply that the limitations of what it could and couldn’t do in terms of the overall potential of the F-35 had to be understood.

Both O’Rourke and Lockwood confirmed that there was a need for the F-35 community to share experiences and learn from each other. There were issues including creating Red Air and electronic warfare challenges to fully test not one but several aircraft together. “We can focus on federated solutions to bring things together, as all of the solutions aren’t developed yet,” concluded O’Rourke.

FOOTNOTE:

Lt. Col. Kevin O’Rourke is a former Commanding Officer of a USMC F/A-18 Squadron. He has over 2,900 flight hours and is a graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN) and the Marine Corps Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course (WTI).

Squadron Leader Lockwood undertook two tours on the Typhoon FGR4 and completed the inaugural Typhoon Qualified Weapons Instructor (QWI) course. Posted to the United States as an Exchange Officer, he qualified as an F22 Instructor Pilot and Flight Examiner with the 94th Fighter Squadron. Upon his return he joined the UK’s Lightning Force headquarters to work on F-35 pilot training syllabi and assurance.