Simulation-Focused Collective Aircrew Training

The training of Army aircrews at the unit level was characterized in the past by practice in the live flight environment. Due to rapid changes in unit missions, the scarcity of airspace and flight hours, increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, and frequent deployments, the opportunity to practice perishable skills in live flight has diminished. Aviation unit commanders have seen the wisdom of providing a means of practicing collective tasks in a virtual environment, which will ensure an efficient and effective mechanism for learning new unit-level tasks and maintaining skills required for continued unit readiness. Commanders also need an objective means of determining the most effective alternative among three types of training environments (live, virtual, and constructive) available to them for a given set of collective tasks.

This R&D unit will determine the training objectives and tasks, techniques, and procedures that virtual simulation can best support in Army Collective Aircrew training; will define and assess the training effectiveness of alternative mixes of training aids, devices, simulators, simulation, and actual aircraft, to exploit the training capabilities of the live and simulated environments for training Army aviation units in collective tasks; and will investigate and develop new methodologies for collective instruction capitalizing on advances in computer science and artificial intelligence.

In FY04, we will:

• Assess the methods employed in Army aviation units to train collective tasks
• Identify components (e.g., roles of simulation devices and live aircraft training) of a model for simulator-focused collective aircrew training

Proponent: U.S. Army Aviation Center
ARI Unit: Rotary-Wing Aviation Research Unit

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