There's a difference between "airmanship" / academic flying and systems proficiency. Elements of both can be emulated or delivered synthetically. The corner we're boxing ourselves into is buying exquisite platforms that we cannot afford to fly due to maintenance costs, nor crash due to high unit cost meaning fewer numbers - and it's the same arguments with weapons and sensors. With unlimited budgets we'd have more frames and hours. Without, we need to be creative. Full Dynamic Mission Simulators have a part, as do "part task trainers". Having an analogous aircraft to keep proficiency is nothing new. The T-38 was used both by NASA and the SR-71 community as their "prime aircraft" were simply too expensive to fly often - the highest timed SR-71 guy got about 1400hrs (and the NASA pilot with the most Shuttle missions has 5 as CDR and 1 as pilot - so 5 real landings...). The art is to pull together all of the threads to provide a cohesive package, not just using off-aircraft training or surrogacy to merely save money, which minimises "negative training" and leaves the crew best placed to do their job. Don't forget that training isn't merely a preserve of the crew; often that aircraft is there to provide a service to troops on the ground, and they need to train too - with F35 being such a large part of the future SA picture, but unlikely to turn up on many Land exercises due to numbers/costs/crew proficiency needs, a surrogate that replicates F35 capability realistically for the ground Users is essential....same with UAVs when the troops train somewhere they're not allowed to fly.
Last edited by Evalu8ter; 18th Feb 2017 at 12:57.