Simulator a Forgiving Teacher : Military: Computerized trainers test Marine fliers’ ability to handle emergencies--and give them a second chance when they err.
Retired Marine Maj. Gen. Donald E.P. Miller still remembers the first time he strapped himself into a new $10-million helicopter simulator at Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.
The instructor was in a “particularly spiteful” mood that day, Miller recalled.
“He piled one emergency on top of another, and he had me on an instrument landing to El Toro in the middle of a thunderstorm when the two engines in my CH-46 flamed out,” said Miller, a former wing commander at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station who now lives in Pace, Fla. “Needless to say, I crashed. It’s good I was in a simulator.”
A flight simulator is one of the few places that pilots get a second chance, said Ron Roberts, a civilian instructor at the flight simulator facility at Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. The computerized trainers can save lives by training pilots to handle emergencies that they otherwise could not experience without crashing, he said.
“Usually, you only get one chance in a real emergency, and if you don’t do the right thing at the right time, it’s all over,” Roberts said. “If you have practiced that situation in a simulator, you know how you should react.”
But aviators argue that no matter how realistic simulators become, they will never replace the real thing.
Miller, who retired last year after 35 years in Marine Corps aviation, said there are lawmakers in Washington who think that costs could be cut by increasing the amount of pilot training on flight simulators.
“That may be OK for airline pilots with 10,000 or 15,000 hours, but airline pilots don’t go to war,” Miller said.
With the increasing costs of operating high-performance aircraft, the aviation industry, both military and commercial, are relying more and more on high-technology flight simulators that take pilots to new levels of realism and sensations without leaving the ground. Pilots learn to make split-second, life-and-death decisions in a sophisticated, computer-controlled environment with little risk.
For example, it costs $1,765 an hour to operate an F/A-18, but only about $780 for labor, utilities and maintenance for an hour in a state-of-the-art simulator, according to Maj. Douglas Darling, deputy comptroller for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.
The wing has 10 flight simulators worth $140 million. Helicopter simulators for the huge CH-53E Super Stallion and the smaller troop-hauling CH-46 Sea Knight are at Tustin, while three simulators for the F/A-18 Hornet and one for the C-130 transport are at El Toro. Others for the smaller Huey and Cobra helicopters are at Camp Pendleton. The AV-8B Harrier weapons systems trainer simulator and a night-attack simulator, both worth a total of more than $50 million, are at the Marine base in Yuma, Ariz.
The most sophisticated simulator in the Marine Corps, if not in all the services, is at El Toro.
Costing $24 million, the simulator has its own building that includes two life-size F/A-18D cockpits that sit on pedestals under 40-foot-diameter domes. The domes are really screens that flash pictures of moving terrain, sky, water or an occasional enemy aircraft that fly by so fast they are hard to see.
The cockpits never move, but the scenery does, giving all the illusion of flying. At times, the plane can appear to be flying so close to the ground that treetops seem to be brushing against its underside. Pilots can also simulate flying upside down or diving toward the earth at the speed of sound.
The two planes can fly together or enter a dogfight with a third computer-generated enemy plane, teaching aviators tactics and new weapon systems. The simulator allows pilots to train over deserts and mountains. They can fly over a computer replica of downtown Los Angeles or buzz the San Onofre nuclear power plant.
Unlike the F/A-18 trainer, the helicopter simulators for the CH-53E and CH-46E rest on long, hydraulic legs about 30 feet above the floor. The cockpit cubicle that holds the two pilots and the instructor is lifted, dropped, swayed and jerked by hydraulics to create the movement as if it were in flight. This accentuates the computer images projected on the windows of the life-size cockpit, complete with hundreds of lights, gauges, switches and buttons.
“It is actually harder to fly in the simulator,” said Capt. Rick Queen, who flies a CH-46E Sea Knight. But even with the lack of realism in the simulator, it can be used effectively to practice coordination between the two pilots and improve efficiency reading gauges and pushing buttons, he said.
Another pilot, Capt. Tom Drechsler, 30, of VMFA-323 at El Toro, praised the F/A-18 simulators for providing aviators an opportunity to practice the use of new weapons systems. “For the pilots, it is a matter of learning which button to push when,” he said, adding that the F/A-18 throttles have seven separate functions and the stick has five controls on it. “Each one can mean a different thing depending on the weapon system on the plane.”
Drechsler, who has 2,100 hours of flight time and about 700 hours in the simulator, said pilots have to practice using new weapons systems before going to the range to drop live bombs or launch missiles. “Time at the bombing range is scarce, and you can’t waste your 20 minutes deciding which button to push or which switch to throw.”
But he said no amount of time in the simulator can replace the 20 minutes at the range.
“The simulators are real close, but it is not the real thing,” Drechsler said. “The stress level is not the same. No one is yapping at you on the radio, your wingman is not talking to you, there’s no Gs (effects of gravity on the body at high speeds) and you don’t perspire in a simulator.”
