Live Virtual Constructive technology to revolutionize ACM

[spazsinbad]

USAF GROKS Virtual Training but some unGROK for whatever reason - SHIRLEY USAF knows what quality they produce.

Air Force cuts pilot training by 5 weeks
30 Jun 2018 Sig Christenson

"The Air Force has cut as much as five weeks from the time required to teach novice pilots to earn their wings, a move that will help it replace rapidly departing veteran aviators...."

Source: https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/ ... 040570.php

By the By only graphics can be reproduced - WhY? Becuz I ain't gonna subscribe being in the Great South Land and all y'all.

"T-38 instructor pilot Josh Thomson uses a computer flight simulator at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. Thomson is assigned to the 560th Flying Training Squadron, the Chargin' Cheetahs" https://s.hdnux.com/photos/74/22/72/158 ... 20x920.jpg

"T-38 instructor pilot Josh Thomson flies on a computer flight simulator at Randolph Air Force Base on Thursday, June 28, 2018. Thomson is assigned to the 560th Flying Training Squadron, the Chargin' Cheetahs" https://s.hdnux.com/photos/74/22/72/158 ... 4x1024.jpg

USAF has slashed UTP to 49 weeks and some instructors are concern
02 Jun 2018 ALERT5

"It now takes the U.S. Air Force an average of 49.2 weeks to train a pilot under the undergraduate pilot training syllabus. Previously, it was 54.7 weeks.

The service was able to acheive this by making students fly simulators early in the syllabus and more flight time on the T-38 and T-1.

However, some instructors are worried that the new system is risky as the training syllabus has been altered radically.
Instructors pointed out that students who do well in simulators might not perform as well in the actual cockpit – which is loud, hot and sweaty...."

Source: http://alert5.com/2018/07/02/usaf-has-s ... e-concern/

[popcorn]

I'm not getting this... Students are getting 'more flight time on the T-38 and T-1' so what's the problem?

[spazsinbad]

Without access to all the text in the main article perhaps this quote - out of context - will make more sense - in context?

"...However, some instructors are worried that the new system is risky as the training syllabus has been altered radically. Instructors pointed out that students who do well in simulators might not perform as well in the actual cockpit – which is loud, hot and sweaty...."

[marauder2048]

Two great presentations on JSE at NDIA's 2018 Test.

https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/test/Smith.pdf
https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/test/Sibley.pdf

[spazsinbad]

GOOD STUFF! Thanks for this...

[spazsinbad]

Cubic begins equipping 500 more F-35s with integrated air combat training system
20 Nov 2018 Gareth Jennings

"Cubic has awarded the first contract related to equipping a second batch of 500 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft with its P5 Combat Training System (P5CTS).

Global Defense has contracted Leonardo to integrate the internal subsystems of its integrated air combat training system aboard 500 JSFs, bringing to 1,000 the number of aircraft fitted. Under the contract, announced on 19 November, the P5CTS internal subsystems will be delivered to Cubic over the next four years as part of Lockheed Martin's F-35 production lots 12-14.

The US military currently uses the P5CTS as its programme of record instructional aid, giving it a real-time breakdown of the scenarios being run and the missions being flown through the live monitoring and recorded mission data of air-to-air, air-to-ground, and surface-to-air training scenarios for real-time training and post-mission analysis.

While current fourth-generation aircraft carry an external pod, the airborne sub-system for the F-35 is internalised and integral to the aircraft to maintain the platform's stealth characteristics (all F-35 customers except Israel, which has its own system, will use this)…."

Source: https://www.janes.com/article/84704/cub ... ing-system

[spazsinbad]

Services Declare Breakthrough in LVC Training
02 Jan 2019 Stew Magnuson

"ORLANDO, Fla. — Air Force and Navy officials are declaring success for a joint technology demonstration that tied jet fighters in the air with pilots operating simulators on the ground, who could all fly against computer-generated adversaries. A final report on the Secure LVC (live-virtual-constructive) Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) demonstration was due at the end of December, but organizers a month earlier said that the exercise went better than expected.

“We’re not supposed to say that it was a very successful technology demonstration — that’s supposed to come from our senior leaders — but it was a very successful technology demonstration,” said Wink Bennett, SLATE research lead at the Air Force Research Laboratory. “It was beyond our wildest hopes,” he added.

A team lead by the Air Force’s 711th Human Performance Wing of the Airman Systems Directorate, Warfighter Readiness Research Division took more than four years to set up the exercise. The demonstration then took place over an eight-month period at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. This was created out of “unobtanium.” It had never been done before, said David Noah, AFRL’s program lead for the demonstration.

To make live-virtual-constructive training a reality, the team had to develop several key technologies.

One was the fifth-generation advanced training waveform (5G-ATW) developed by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory to serve as the datalink. In addition to the new waveform, the training system was served by Link-16 and UHF/VHF voice communications.

The second hurdle was ensuring that all three links were cyber secure and encrypted. The aircraft also carried a SLATE pod that contained the necessary software and allowed for “untethered” operations.

“Tethered” training used the 5G-ATW to connect to a ground station, where pilots could operate simulators and take part in the exercise virtually. That also allowed for more robust scenarios with an almost unlimited number of enemy aircraft or surface-to-air missile sites. [BEST TO READ IT ALL because 'tethered' / 'untethered' (lost in space) explained]…

...“There is an incredible capability that we demonstrated in untethered ops during SLATE,” Noah said. A pilot could start out operating as an F-15 Eagle, then switch over to be part of the red team and fly as a member of an enemy formation: “You can change it literally on the fly: it was gorgeous.”

The exercise used F-15s, F-16s and Navy F/A-18s. Next will be creating links for fifth-generation fighters such as the F-22 and F-35. That will be challenging, but doable, the organizers said.

“That is yet to be solved, and it is a horse of a different color, but we have a plan to go fix that,” Bennett said.

The underlying technology is platform agnostic, Noah said. It could work on other types of aircraft, ships or space systems."

JPG: Photo: Air Force http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... AAF7E005D7

Source: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... c-training

[spazsinbad]

More on JSE Joint Simulation Environment:

Joint Simulation Environment inches closer to reality
24 Jan 2018 Giancarlo Casem, 412th Test Wing Public Affairs

"EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- The 412th Electronic Warfare Group is one step closer to bringing the Joint Simulation Environment to life at Edwards Air Force Base. The 412th EWG recently began work to pave the way for ultimately building a new facility to house the JSE. JSE is a scalable, expandable, high fidelity government-owned, non-proprietary modeling and simulation environment to conduct testing on fifth-plus generation aircraft and systems accreditable for test as a supplement to open-air testing.

The 72,139 square foot JSE facility planned for Edwards AFB is actually one of two, the other will be constructed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. As part of the construction efforts, the 412th EWG is also looking to hire more than 100 new personnel between both facilities -- primarily engineers with software skillsets.

The Edwards AFB facility will focus on developmental testing while the 50,967 square foot Nellis AFB facility will focus on operational testing. However, both facilities will be built with similar hardware and software configurations so both buildings will be able to augment each other’s capabilities, said Humberto Blanco, JSE project manager. The JSE facility is also being designed with that flexibility in mind.

While construction for the JSE is still months away, the 412th EWG is already ensuring that when it comes online, “growing pains” will be as minimal as possible.

“One of the things we realized was that in order for our people to become trained and get familiar with the system, its capabilities and participate in the development; it required us to develop an in-house instantiation of what’s happening at Pax River (Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland) as well as at SIMAF (U.S. Air Force Simulation and Analysis Facility),” said Blanco. “Those two facilities have limited JSE capabilities, so we advocated for, and received funding to instantiate those capabilities here.”

Construction crews are reconfiguring simulator and computer systems inside building 1020 at Edwards AFB, to make room for a small-scale JSE system that 412th EWG engineers can utilize to ensure all systems are operational and internal issues are rectified before the actual JSE facility is finished. Having a small-scale instantiation of the larger facility also allows 412th EWG customers to concurrently utilize the facilities without service interruptions, Blanco said.

“It will allow us to bring JSE simulators online and begin to experiment and to learn,” Blanco said.

The reconfiguring inside building 1020 will afford software engineers the time to be familiar with the incoming systems, which will benefit customers, said Gerald Lockwood, Modeling and Simulation flight chief.

“The coders have to really touch and see how to integrate these systems. We’re building products for it so we can develop, compile, test and get feedback on issues,” Lockwood said. “There’s so many components. It’s going to be a large battlespace in an interactive environment.”

The overall goal of the JSE is to allow the testers and engineers the capability to test multiple platforms during the developmental and operational testing phases of a platform.

“We’ve been asked to develop a high-fidelity modeling and simulation environment for initially the F-35 (Lightning II) and F-22 (Raptor) that will allow us to test aircraft in ways that we’re currently unable to test,” Blanco said. “So the environment will encompass things like weather, terrain, multiple other platforms and air and ground threats.”

“The JSE is one of my favorite projects because in terms of initial pay off, it’s just a few short years down the road,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Azzano, Air Force Test Center commander. “We’re going to use the F-35 as the threshold platform to help prove the concept, but the long term potential of JSE is huge when you consider you can integrate virtual and constructive elements with live and open-air capability in a way that creates an environment that we can no longer build or replicate strictly with open-air resources.” [LVC LIVE VIRTUAL CONSTRUCTIVE]

Azzano said that he foresees the JSE becoming a step in the testing and developing of Air Force platforms in the future and that, in just a short time, AFTC customers will see its value.

“It’s really exciting because we can replicate the environment that our systems and warfighters might see in a dense threat environment somewhere around the globe. And we can replicate that for verification and validation that goes along with test and evaluation, and we can do it for training too,” Azzano said. “I really think we’re just barely scratching the surface on the pay off and the potential of JSE, and with the right vision I think we’ll get there, it’s going to take some time and a lot of investment, but it is a hugely important program.”

While the groundbreaking for both facilities is not scheduled until May 2020, Blanco said that when the buildings do come online, his team will be ready.

“Instead of waiting until the buildings are finished, we are developing these lab integrations here, so when the buildings are finished, we can hit the ground running,” Blanco said. “It’s very exciting times for the Air Force and the modeling and simulations community. I tell people on the outside that this is going to be the best video game ever.”"

Graphic: "An artist's rendering showcases the planned 72,139 square foot Joint Simulation Environment facility. JSE is a scalable, expandable high-fidelity, government-owned, non-proprietary modeling and simulation environment to conduct testing on fifth generation aircraft and systems accreditable for test as supplement to open-air testing. (U.S. Air Force graphic illustration courtesy of 412th Electronic Warfare Group)" https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/15/2 ... 3-1002.JPG (150Kb)

Source: https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display ... o-reality/

[popcorn]

Incredible achievement, Kudos to all involved. Should save a ton of gas and wear and tear in the process.

[spazsinbad]

MORe ON SLATE. I'll assume the F-35 version will integrate inside the airframe and not have to use 'a pod' for gorsake.

Cubic seeks 2020 contract to integrate the F-35 with a cutting-edge training tool
04 Dec 2019 Valerie Insinna

"...The Air Force Research Laboratory aimed to create a technology suite that would allow the service to blend simulators and virtual elements with live training under the Secure Live, Virtual and Constructive Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) program.

In August and September 2018, the Air Force and Navy validated that it could take an F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-15E Strike Eagle outfitted with that gear and run complex flight training scenarios where, for instance, an F-15E pilot flying with a wingman in a simulator could face off against live and virtual adversaries that emit the threat information of Chinese fighter jets or integrated air defenses.

“Over the course of three weeks [in August and September 2018], we flew multiple days, multiple exercises. We flew almost 100 sorties in support of the demonstration,” said Mike Knowles, the head of Cubic Global Defense, AFRL’s industry partner on the program. Knowles spoke with Defense News during the at the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference.

Now that SLATE’s technology demonstration phase has ended, the services are identifying their next steps, and Cubic is hoping for more work.

“Air Combat Command and the F-35 Joint program office are working to fund our division’s proposed look at SLATE capabilities integration with the F-35,” Dave Noah, Maj. Thomas Adams and Maj. Jason Lingle, who work in AFRL’s Continuous Learning and Program Assessment division, wrote in the lab’s fall 2019 magazine.

The Navy, meanwhile, is interested in holding additional demonstrations with the SLATE technology at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada, Knowles said. “We’ll see some experiments with the Navy take place this summer and into the fall," he said. "A fifth-gen study on the application of LVC for the F-35, I suspect we’ll see that start this [coming] year also.” [more about SLATE]…

...The SLATE’s 5GATW waveform and security architecture were formulated with fifth-generation aircraft in mind, so the F-35 can use the SLATE pod without needing additional data safeguards. The challenge is integrating the technology with the F-35’s more advanced sensor fusion system, Knowles said.

“On the F-15 and F/A-18 — fourth-generation [jets] — Boeing helped in working the integration between the SLATE pod and the sensor fusion in the aircraft,” he said. “The F-35, given its capabilities are significantly more than a fourth-generation aircraft, the sensor fusion is significantly more complex...."

Source: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-sho ... ning-tool/

[doge]

Quirk...!? Is it difficult to reproduce the F-35's Sensor Fusion on Live, Virtual !?
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/ ... l-out-usaf

F-35 Software Quirk Prevents LVC Training Roll-Out To USAF
August 14, 2020
The U.S. Air Force has deferred plans to implement live, virtual and constructed (LVC) training technology into the fighter fleet because of a quirk in the Lockheed Martin F-35As powerful sensor...

The F-35A’s onboard sensor fusion prevents the Air Force right now from widely implementing a live, virtual and constructed training format, a top US Air Force commander says.

[spazsinbad]

Cubic to Deliver P5 Combat Training System for the F-35
19 Feb 2021 Seapower Staff [SEE also: viewtopic.php?f=62&t=54755&p=407298&hilit=Leonardo#p407298 ]

"SAN DIEGO —Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions (CMPS) business division was awarded a contract worth $32 million from Lockheed Martin for two more production lots of the P5 Combat Training System (P5CTS) for the F-35 Lightning II, Cubic announced in a Feb. 19 release.

Under the contract, Cubic will deliver over 150 training subsystems for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation (ACMI) system. This new order increases the total number of F-35 P5 on contract to over 1,150 and ensures fielding of F-35 P5 out to 2025.

Unlike traditional P5 podded solutions for fourth-generation fighter aircraft, the F-35 P5 is an internal subsystem configuration that relays time, space and position information between participating aircraft and range ground stations during training sorties.

“Our advanced and interoperable P5CTS is used on more than 30 ranges worldwide and continues to set the standard for joint, multiservice and coalition training,” said Mike Knowles, president of Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions. “Training for today’s advanced threats to air combat operations requires adaptable, high-fidelity training tools. Cubic’s P5CTS provides secure and scalable instrumentation solutions that enable integrated fourth- and fifth-generation training for our U.S. forces, allies and partners.”

The worldwide P5 infrastructure includes the integration of P5 pods and internal subsystems, ground stations and software, and is an investment shared by 17 countries. A recent upgrade to this training infrastructure is the integration of decryptors in the P5 ground stations to enable F-35 live monitoring at training ranges.

Cubic and its principal subcontractor, Leonardo DRS, will continue to produce and maintain the F-35 P5 internal subsystem. The Leonardo DRS Airborne and Intelligence Systems business division is responsible for the design and production of the airborne P5CTS Internal Subsystem."

Source: https://seapowermagazine.org/cubic-to-d ... -the-f-35/

[doge]

LVC article.
https://www.airforcemag.com/a-high-tech ... ng-crisis/

A High-Tech Fix for the Air Force’s Training Crisis?
April 2, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman
The Air Force has long faced a silent crisis: It can’t train and retain enough pilots. And now, challenged to confront peer adversaries, rather than the insurgents it’s been engaging for the last 20 years, even the pilots the service can train aren’t getting the quantity or quality of hours in mock combat they need to hone their skills, according to former USAF leaders.
A transformative new technology, which combines live training with virtual simulation, can help address that problem, its proponents say. Augmented reality training is “a game changer,” promised Will Roper, who previously served as the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics.
The pilot shortfall has been a persistent problem for the Air Force, despite a $1.7 billion annual training budget. But it’s been highlighted anew as the U.S. military has pivoted from the “endless wars” of counter insurgency to confront peer adversaries, especially China, which has its own fifth-generation fighters to match the U.S. F-22 and F-35.
“The gap between how we train our combat aviators and how they’ll need to fight against modern adversaries has continued to grow wider,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We’re essentially still training our pilots the same way we did 60 years ago.”

Combat training for fighter pilots, with a red team playing the role of adversaries like China’s fifth generation J-20, is expensive and time consuming. Above all, it’s “limited by the availability of air and ground training assets that accurately replicate those peer threat systems,” explained retired Gen. James M. Holmes, former head of Air Combat Command who now serves as Chairman of the Red 6 board. He added that the red teams at major Air Force exercises like Red Flag “resemble 1980s Warsaw Pact threats more than they resemble the capabilities of 2020’s China and Russia.”
Forty years ago, Holmes said, as a young lieutenant, he flew more than 225 training sorties a year, or about 350 hours a year. Now, his son Capt. Wade Holmes, who flies F-16s in the Air National Guard, is “lucky to fly 120 of those [training sorties] a year and almost half of those are flown as red air, providing training support for someone else.”
The Air Force has used simulation technology to try to close that gap, and is investing heavily in its new approach to training: Live, virtual, and constructive. “LVC is widely recognized as the only way, the only cost-effective way, for us to train against fifth-generation adversaries,” said long-time Senate Armed Services Committee staffer and USAF veteran Robert “Otis” Winkler. “We spent a ton of money and a ton of time developing the virtual and constructive portion of it.”
He spoke alongside Holmes and Deptula at a Mitchell Institute virtual seminar March 16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmEqXTrtyM

Simulators and other virtual training tools allow geographically dispersed forces—including foreign allies—to train together, Winkler noted. Simulators also let pilots push the envelope in ways that would be too risky in real-life training, noted Holmes. “You can practice things in a sim that aren’t safe to practice in an aircraft.”
But, Holmes added, “There’s no substitute for live training.”
That’s because simulators can’t accurately reproduce the physical and intellectual stress of actual flight, noted Dan Robinson, a retired Royal Air Force pilot who became a USAF flight training instructor and was the first foreigner to fly an F-22. “It’s one thing to perform a maneuver in a sim, it’s another thing to perform it when you’re pulling 9Gs,” Robinson told Air Force Magazine. “The physics matters … The cognitive load is completely different when the pilot is actually in flight.”
Robinson is the founder and CEO of Red 6, a tech start-up offering augmented and virtual reality solutions as a way to allow pilots to train live against virtual adversaries.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Robinson said. Pilots can train in real flight—flying with a special helmet and heads-up display that allows them to see their virtual enemies. The enemies, being online creations, can be modeled to mimic the capabilities and profile of any adversary weapons platform—and can be powered by artificial intelligence. “You can create the adversary, define his capabilities, and train against weapons systems that would be too expensive for live training, such as hypersonic missiles,” Robinson said.

But the technology is challenging, he explained. Virtual reality creates an entirely synthetic environment, which is a relatively straightforward challenge. “In augmented reality we are introducing virtual entities, virtual objects into the real world, and making them interact dynamically with us, with our surroundings, as if they were really there and that’s a much more complex set of technical problems to solve.”
The key breakthrough technologies that enable Red 6’s Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS), Robinson said, were in vision tracking—ascertaining where the pilot is looking and shifting the perspective of the virtual objects accordingly—and in the display. “Most VR doesn’t work outside … The environment is too dynamic and the display isn’t visible enough. It’s like trying to look at your cellphone screen in bright sunlight.” VR technology is generally limited to a 60-degree field of vision, about a third of the 180-degree field of vision humans have in the real world. “We are at about 120 degrees right now, and we are working on expanding that,” Robinson said.
AR is a transformational technology, with applications way beyond pilot training, Roper said. “This will disrupt not just Air Force training, but all-domain training … Augmented reality provides a paradigm-shifting opportunity for the military to train at much lower costs and against threats and in environments that cannot be recreated in the real world,” added Roper, who was appointed last month to the Red 6 Advisory Board. “AR technology has major commercial applications as well.”
Red 6 has completed a SBIR II contract from AFWERX and is expecting a SBIR III soon. The Red 6 team is working to integrate its ATARS technology into a T-38 training aircraft at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
“That is the next step for us,” Robinson said, “to demonstrate how this will work in an Air Force trainer jet.”

[spazsinbad]

Leonardo DRS Awarded Contract for 150+ P5 Combat Training Systems for F-35
24 Jun 2021 Seapower Staff

"ARLINGTON, Va. — Leonardo DRS Inc.’s Airborne & Intelligence Systems business division was awarded a contract from Cubic Mission and Performance Solutions (CMPS), a division of Cubic Corporation, to deliver additional P5 Combat Training Systems (P5CTS) for the F-35 Lightning II, Leonardo announced in a June 24 release.

Under the contract Leonardo DRS will deliver two more production lots of its P5CTS internal subsystems for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation (ACMI) system....

...Military services are increasingly moving toward multi-domain operations, and since 2013, Leonardo DRS has delivered more than 779 of its P5CTS internal subsystems for the F-35 to provide training to counter and keep ahead of growing global adversarial threats.

The P5CTS internal subsystem is unlike traditional external training pods used on legacy 4th generation fighter aircraft. The internal subsystem supports 5th generation and 4th generation combat training operations....

...The air combat systems are being delivered to the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and international partner nations. These training systems are designed to address emerging needs for customers as global threats evolve. The P5CTS is part of the Leonardo DRS advanced sensor technology portfolio which has an extensive installed base across the U.S. military."

Source: https://seapowermagazine.org/leonardo-d ... -for-f-35/