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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0148.PDF
SIMULATING the battle zone The spate of flying accidents involving Nato squadrons in central Europe has intensified the debate on the need for alternative training systems for front-line fighter pilots. One answer could lie in a new simulation system already being flown by Tactical Air Command and US Marine Corps pilots in the United States. John Bailey reports from St Louis. « An American Boeing 747 has exploded L\ while en route from Frankfurt to A. \. New York, killing everyone on board. The government of a Middle Eastern state has claimed responsibility, and threatens to carry out further attacks against US targets. In response, the president has authorised retaliatory strikes against two of that coun try's military bases." In a briefing room, a group of USAF Tactical Air Command (TAC) F-15 pilots is receiving instructions. Their mission is to provide force protection for a package of FT 8 Hornets during an air strike' against designated targets. They can expect to face adverse weather, all-aspect ground and air threats, and a heavy electronic countermeasures (ECM) environment. This scenario has frightening parallels with recent history, but it was created by Major Clarke "Frog" Peele—responsible for developing advanced training systems for TAC's F-15 Squadrons—long before the recent Lockerbie disaster. Even before real ity followed the model, the model was con sidered real enough to have normally unenthusiastic fighter pilots queuing for the chance of a four-day training deployment to the McDonnell Douglas Manned Air Battle Centre in St Louis, Missouri. The McDonnell Douglas simulation centre was originally designed to help engineering research for use in the design and evaluation of new aircraft programmes. Company and Air Force pilots have used the simulators to advise on the effectiveness of new cockpit displays and procedures, weap ons systems integration, and new control configurations, but the centre has never been used in a structured training programme for the USAF. New system Some four years ago, McDonnell Douglas simulation engineers working on the Air Force's Joint Tactical Information Distribu tion System (JTIDS) developed a method of running multi-ship simulation missions from one computer, using two tightly coupled parallel processors synchronised to operate as a single unit. The system allows pilots sitting in separate simulators to "fly" through the same airspace, while computer- generated images of the other pilots' aircraft are projected on to the interior of each simu lator, allowing the pilots to "see" and react to each other in flight. This means that, in addition to flying in combat against digitally produced unmanned aerial targets, pilots can fly realistic combat missions with or against other manned aircraft. There are seven 40ft-diameter spherical simulator domes in the main building, and four more 40ft domes and a 20ft dome in an Tactical Air Command pilots in F-15 cockpits can fly combat missions against either manned or digi tally generated hostile aircraft projected inside their simulator domes 34 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 21 January 1989
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