TROUBLE SHOOTER : Jet Pilots Sharpen Aerial Combat Skills With Help of High-Tech Simulator
It is at 22,000 feet, while just skirting the speed of sound, that the FA-18 Hornet suddenly suffers a major failure in its flight control system. Nothing the pilot tries will bring the spinning, tumbling jet fighter back from the brink of destruction.
Or maybe it’s during aerial combat--the dogfight--that the pilot finds that the enemy plane he had closed in on for the kill has somehow outmaneuvered him. Now, instead of being the hunter, he is the hunted.
Either scenario could easily result in the loss of the plane and the death of its pilot, but this time, he will live to fly and fight another day.
That’s because any time he wishes, a pilot can simply climb out of the cockpit and walk to a nearby room where, in the company of an instructor, he can study a computer tape of the entire scenario in a step-by-step, minute-by-minute evaluation of his performance.
What the pilot has been “flying” is the Weapons Tactics Trainer at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, a simulator with all the latest in high-tech sophistication found in the real FA-18 Hornet. It is the core of the base’s new computer-assisted instruction center for fighter pilots.
The center, which opened in January, 1985, provides pilots access not only to the simulator but also to other instructional equipment and materials 24 hours a day, seven days a week, rain or shine. Built for $88 million--roughly the cost of three FA-18s--it’s paying for itself, in the eyes of the Marine Corps, by reducing the amount of time the planes are actually flown, as well as significantly reducing the chances for accidents.
Helps in Other Areas
As its name implies, the simulator’s main function is to teach and refine aerial combat techniques. But it also has proven invaluable in numerous other areas, such as weapons development and how to respond to emergencies or unusual flight situations, according to the pilots who use it.
“It takes away the gee-whiz factor,” said Maj. Bob Elflein, operations officer of Marine Air Group 11. “We can tell them: ‘Here’s what to expect, what cues to look for in problems you might run into.’ It can be weather, a system failure or even the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier where a pilot is trying to land.”
Through a sophisticated series of computer programs, the simulator can present a pilot with almost any conceivable situation that he could run up against in the air. And, Elflein points out, new ones are being thought up almost every week.
Housed in a high-security building that sits in a far corner of the sprawling air base, the simulator actually is made up of two full-sized FA-18 cockpits mounted on platforms at the center of a pair of domes 40 feet in diameter.
Realistic Cockpits
The cockpits are so realistic, Elflein said, that the instruments and controls, as well as the computers that run them, could be taken out of the simulator and used to fly a real FA-18.
Seven cameras project images in a 360-degree sweep around the inside of the domes, re-creating any conceivable environment the pilot could fly through--day, night, over land or the ocean, cloudy or clear.
In combat scenarios, Elflein said, the pilots, flying individually or in two-plane teams, could find themselves up against an adversary whose skills range from that of a new, inexperienced aviator to those of a seasoned veteran. And the enemy’s planes are not just targets flashed on the screen. They fly just like the real ones, based on known performance specifications that have been fed into the simulator’s computers.
“We have five targets that are available, including the latest Soviet MIGs and our own F-15, F-16 and the 18,” Elflein said. “Why our own planes? Because they represent the best we could ever come up against.”
Two of Marine Air Group 11’s Hornet squadrons flew in support of the U.S. raids on Libya last April but were not engaged in combat by any Libyan pilots during the operation.
‘To Shoot or Not’
The Hornet carries two types of air-to-air missiles as well as a gun system, and the simulator teaches a pilot “what to use in a certain situation,” said Maj. Jim Burke, who also flies the FA-18.
“It teaches you to recognize what to do and recognize it without thinking about it,” Burke said. “And it helps define whether to shoot or not. You can’t always rely on the (weapon system’s) computer.”
Beyond its training functions, the simulator allows pilots to invent new combat tactics and work out their fine points without costly trial-and-error attempts in the real planes, or with real armaments, Elflein said.
“And some of the scenarios are so creative that it’s much better to do them over and over in the simulator until they’re right, rather than go up and just waste a missile trying it out,” he said.
Just like the pilot and the plane, sometimes the scenarios reveal limits to the missile systems, Burke said--a so-called “performance envelope” that a new tactic may exceed. And finding those limits beforehand can be helpful in improving the weapons themselves.
‘Sense of the Plane’
“So we’re also further defining the missile’s capability, it’s envelope, and we can maybe go back to its manufacturer and suggest some improvements,” he said.
Because of the FA-18’s sophistication, any pilot who goes more than two weeks between flights is required to spend time in the simulator re-acclimating himself, getting “the sense of the plane back,” Elflein said.
The simulator also gives pilots the chance to learn how to deal with a wide variety of emergencies, such as control malfunctions, that would be almost impossible to initiate for training purposes in a real plane.
“Every week we can pick a different emergency situation and then work through it,” said Capt. Tim Murphy. “We can take all that we know could happen and then throw in a couple of ‘what ifs.’ Here, if it all goes wrong, you can just walk out of the simulator. You can’t do that when you’re in the plane.”
