Rockwell Collins in co-operation with the Government Business Council (GBC), has released a new report entitled Going Virtual to Prepare for a New Era of Defense. In a special briefing for the press, the company laid out its findings (Can Virtual Training Address the US Military’s Readiness Crisis?) but also identified areas of improvement, which we will focus on in this article.
The Navy has been quite active in virtual training, which it calls synthetic training. The Navy states that it should be used “whenever it is deemed to be effective, efficient and safe”. In its master plan for 2030, it aims to progressively increase the use of virtual training.
Planned Navy increases in virtual training for 2020 are significant, as shown in the graphic, which is good news for providers. And, these estimates may even be conservative. Submarine crews now use simulators for 100% of their pre-deployment training and surface ships conduct over 50% of their pre-deployment training in the virtual environment.
Beginning in FY 2012, Air Combatant Command set a goal of meeting (on average) 25% of training requirements with virtual training. USAF Special Operations Command has set an even higher bar of conducting (on average) 50% of aircrew training in simulators. Air Mobility Command is perhaps the most advanced already. It estimates that (on average) 50% of its aircrew training is currently done in simulators. This includes take-off, landing and instrument training.
Areas of development for the Navy include:
- Increasing the proportion of virtual flight training over live training
- Boosting the fidelity of flight simulators
- Improving the connectivity between geographically dispersed simulators
The GBC report asked respondents about their concerns for increasing the use of virtual training. The results are shown in the chart, with the biggest concern being insufficient simulator fidelity. This lack of realistic virtual training can allow needed knowledge or skills to be omitted in virtual training, and it can induce negative training or out of date training as well. This is not just the visual display aspects of the simulation.
In addition, there are significant challenges in the military services to educate and convince about the benefits of virtual training. But to do so often requires a clear understanding on the return on investment – something that is lacking in general.
In addition, higher ranking service personnel are in general more comfortable with virtual training and those with active duty experience are more accepting of virtual training.
To take virtual training to the next level, GBC has developed several recommendations. The first is for the development of a holistic taxonomy or classification scheme for virtual training tasks. The aim is to identify the right task for virtual training and the right mix of virtual and live training for each task.
In a separate study done by the Director of Force Readiness and Training in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD P&R), 302 military tasks were analyzed with 68% of individual tasks being deemed appropriate for full virtual training, while 43% of collective tasks can go with full virtual training. These are very high numbers and higher than the results of the GBC survey. The bottom line: it is clear that the military can increase the use of virtual training beyond current levels.
The second key need is determining a return on investment for virtual training. What is needed is better cost-benefit analyses to help leaders understand where to get the best value for money with virtual training. For example, currently it is easy to understand the cost benefit part of replacing an hour of live flight training with virtual flight training, but what is unclear is if this provides the same level of performance. If the mixture of live and virtual training is changed, how that impacts performance levels is another question without answers.
The third area of needed development is improving joint interoperability. What that means is that there needs to be better co-ordination between the various services to facilitate virtual training that engages these services in real operations.
Finally, advances need to continue in the simulation technology itself. This includes improvement in visual fidelity but also advances in the way personnel are trained. The study points to the ability to create customized training packages that provide more emphasis on specific tasks that individuals may need to work on.
And, methods to increase the focus of participants in virtual training are needed too. For example, when live aircraft are engaged in a training exercise, participants become more engaged than when it is only virtual assets. This can help increase the realism by increasing physiological reactions with participants – an aspect that can be hard to simulate when the threats are all just virtual objects.
The GBC report provides information as a first step in this direction, but Rockwell Collins is also working with the University of Iowa to further the research. In this effort, the goal is to identify how virtual training can augment or replace aspects of current training protocol while also bringing in all the associated costs to better judge any cost savings and training effectiveness benefits.
John W. Borghese, Vice President of the Advanced Technology Center at Rockwell Collins provided some additional perspective on future needs for virtual training.
One key trend in the commercial market is the use of drones. While the FAA has still to rule on their use in the National airspace, it seems certain that some use will be allowed. And this will create a need for more training on their use (as recent news of an errant drone landing on the White House lawn indicates).
Secondly, he pointed to new regulations for low visibility landings which are about to be approved allowing the expanded use of sensors to guide landings – primarily for the transport and business jet market. This opens up a vast number of airports that can now allow low visibility landings – and a need for training in the use of this gear.
Finally, he identified three training gaps that need to be filled.
- High data rate data link capabilities – creative use of existing bandwidth between military assets is needed as the flow of data to support high fidelity simulations will increase. Rockwell Collins has developed new modulation and information packaging techniques that can allow an increase in information flow.
- Multi-level security – this means there needs to be a hierarchy of simulation security that is lacking today, but which can leverage existing silicon and procedures in the civilian aircraft market.
- Cyber Resilience – This is obviously needed so unwanted tapping of simulation signals is not possible, but more importantly, so that viruses or unwanted control of simulation signals is not possible.
