Proportion of synthetic flying in the future
 

The RAF has already announced its goal for 90% of flying to be synthetic by 2030. Cost and 'green' agenda are 2 cited justifications, but clearly there are other key considerations. Firstly, 'security', assuming that someone would always be watching, no air force would risk revealing tactics or operational capabilities where there was a credible alternative. Secondly, 'realism'. What benefit is derived if the training can't accurately recreate the range of adversaries and tactics our warfighters might face? My interest, as someone working in the support side of industry, is considering what new sustainment models would be required if assets are purchased but subsequently fly far fewer hours than current inventory?'

I'm obviously not asking anyone to discuss specifics and I fully appreciate from speaking to numerous pilots that a minimum amount of real flying will always be needed. But, given the huge range of knowledge and expertise on this forum, conceptually what is the end point with respect to a future manned combat system? 150 actual flying hours a year? 100? 50? None (with any necessary flight time obtained on other less capable platforms)? I would greatly appreciate your insights.

Hmm
 

Hello Mr/Mrs Scrimshankers. That’s a hell of a first post. Well written, erudite and grammatically correct.

What it doesn’t say is who are you and why do you care?

You’re asking a bunch of people you’ve never met who are naturally suspicious to give you quite a lot of detailed information.

Good luck with that.

BV

I think its a plot to retain aircrew. They will not get enough hours to get a licence.

Haha, welcome to the Internet.

I am currently IT manager in a large international company and my hobby is aviation including military aviation. I do not care but I am curious. Will that introduction work?
Oh, and I am neither Chinese nor Russian spy.


This

Well, if this doesn’t tread on aircrew sensibilities ...

... ATC training moved heavily into Simulator Training decades ago, including the Visual (VCR) simulator at Shawbury. Numerous reasons, but for training purposes one has a controlled (no pun intended) environment ... irrespective of real-world weather, traffic density etc. Whilst I completely accept it’s a different environment from flying, how many real-time flying sorties are aborted for weather, serviceability, lack of other participating assets? I know from personal experience how much ATC training/continuation time got wasted due to lack of, or too much, traffic for the trainee’s experience/skill levels.

Where the real/simulated dividing line lies is way beyond my pay-scale/experience.

I am one of this forum’s “grumpy old men” but before I became one I spent 4000+ hours in rear cockpits and then 15 years in the simulator business. I know little about the capabilities and tactics of future combat air systems but whatever they are I reckon an absolute minimum of one real sortie a week is required to keep in touch with the real world and to maintain the level of awareness of danger that no sim will ever replicate. During my time instructing in a very capable modern simulator I can honestly say that I never once saw a crew put in the same level of planning, concentration and commitment that goes into a live sortie.

Another point that rarely gets mentioned in this debate is that people do not join as aircrew, and put in all that toil and tears through training, to spend their life in a simulator. If that is how careers turns out they may well not join in the first place or stay in if they do.

Surely 'G' tolerance would be impossible to maintain in a sim?

Due to COVID restrictions, I've done little flying for months and it shows in my performance, requiring a lot of refresher training with an instructor, real world.
I know sims are now almost cosmic, however, does it really match the real world?

I don't know, hopefully some of you do.

Good afternoon BV. Thank you for your reply and feedback.
I appreciate the reticence regarding new posters. (I have replied to you already - but this has disappeared in the ether.)

However there was nothing in my post which isn't in the public domain and/or a hypothesis which many people in the sector couldn't make (without access to sensitive or proprietary information). I'd also highlight that I didn't seek any information regarding my 4 posited contributing factors and I fully recognise the sensitivity around security and training realism. If the headline themes are accepted as accurate then no further discussion is needed. It would be interesting however to know if there are other factors which compound the trend.

I alluded to the root of my interest but am happy to expand. I work for a large aerospace company (not the BIG one) and am a plane geek - so nothing would please me more than lots of military planes flying around the skies. However my current task is to look at sustainment of future programmes and identify possible changes to the current business model. Today, Industry develops an item, sells the asset and then enjoys 25+ years of aftermarket revenue as the assets are flown, consumed and upgraded. This revenue is significant, fairly predictable and supports the maintenance of the design capability until the next new programme.

So what happens if assets are flown at a fraction of the previous rate? How do you get in-service data to improve and refine your reliability forecasts/maintenance planning? What happens to industry's revenue stream? Who pays for the design capability to be maintained? How do you keep supply chains alive with lower demand? All these are significant challenges to industry, but also to the customer. Yet few people on either side want to have this conversation.

Hence my question isn't about the technical reasons behind the trend, certainly does not seek any 'inside' knowledge regarding the risks/benefits/cons of synthetic training and (assuming the premise is accepted) requires no further comment regarding the hypothesis that 'real flying' may neither be desirable nor valuable in many instances.

But the difference between a future where assets fly 10-30 hours a year (compared to 250+ currently ) has profound contractual, financial and industrial consequences. This is the reason for my interest.

I hope on the basis of this clarification many of the experts on this forum will feel able to provide their thoughts.

Bobward is quite right of course. There is now a simulator in a centrifuge at Cranwell but I do not know how often squadron aircrew go there. Not often I suspect. And not just g; wearing all the kit ( anyone ever done a sim in an immersion suit?) and sorties of representative durations are hardly ever practiced in fast jet sims . Conditioning for the physical demands of real flying should not be forgotten. Someone told me that the B2 world practice full length “global” missions in the sim but the delivery of pizzas half way through rather breaks the spell!

Scrim
 

Your inbox is full!

BV

ironic but that exactly what a Russian spy would say ... and exactly HOW HE'D SAY IT :=

now if you'd written "I am not a Russian spy . . ."

The bit about exposure to 'g', disorientation, weather etc is easily addressed with a 'hack' aircraft, which in the big digital future could easily have displays and softkeys that precisely match those on an expensive, super-secret 'war going' platform that hardly ever flies. The bit about pilot retention is easily addressed with pay: a business case that offsets lavish pay packets for a fortunate few pilots against billions saved in through life support virtually writes itself.

The bit which is much more difficult, and why I think the RAF is just as afraid of pursuing its stated ambitions as industry is to engage with them, is the effect a drastic cut in routine flying hours would have on operational flying. Right now the RAF is able to deploy at little or no additional cost to HM Treasury simply by using its budgeted crew training hours to deliver operational flying. This keeps the RAF relevant in the public and political spheres, at home and on the international stage. If those budgeted crew training hours disappear, then not only does the logistic tail become less efficient due to the difficulty of forecasting support requirements, but HM Treasury will suddenly acquire an effective veto on deployment of RAF assets. Not a position I can imagine senior officers wanting to find themselves in, given the stubborn persistence of a "use it or lose it" culture in every area of MOD bar the deterrent, and the stubborn persistence of HM Treasury in driving down current account spending irrespective of the consequences (witness today's education catch-up funding fiasco). Does anyone think for a minute that we'd be burning Typhoon hours over the Middle East if the decision rested with the bean counters?

The same logic applies to uncrewed autonomous combat aircraft, IMHO: 'ethics' are a convenient smokescreen behind which to avoid a technological step that poses a threat to both customer and supplier. The ethics of whether or not to shoot a hostile track (sometimes declared, ironically, by onboard computer-driven sensor fusion) go out of the window on wave one of WW3...

I like that idea, the less you fly the more you get paid. It could be called “ non flying pay”

Even as long ago as the F-4, simulators were great for various intercepts etc. training, because unlike in the actual aircraft, the radar didn't go U/S all the time. Even the ancient AI trainers at Conongsby were adequate for basic set handling and some intercept training etc. The sims were also used for intercept training and for aircraft emergency procedures etc. But for anything involving G, they were not so useful.

When HCAP visited Valley, the write-up commented on the use of the clever simulators for A-to-A work and the narrative drily mentioned that the young lady who was flying it was talking to them over her shoulder "Whilst pulling a simulated 5G....". Hmmmm....

Part-task-trainers (PTT), properly used for the intended purpose can often achieve more than a full flight simulator, paradoxically. Training new AAR crews for the VC10 in the 'Pennants' trainer was a useful exercise and they concentrated on the task in hand rather than expecting to be given some aircraft emergency in a Full Flight Simulator (FFS). The TriStar 'Corels' were equally good.

When we did the TNA for training air transport crews for the AAR role on a particular aircraft type, we looked at all levels of training media including Computer Based Traing, Computer Assisted Instruction, PTT, FFS and the aircraft itself. The cost of modifying the FFS was prohibitive, so the ultimate decision was for knowledge-based training to be delivered by self-paced CBT and for skill-based training to be delivered by PTT. The first 2 crews did a famil trip in the aircraft, but from then on there was very little 'on aircraft' training as the PTT was such an excellent solution.

So yes, you can do a vast amount of 'role training' in a PTT and/or FFS. But the bean counters need to be reined in from seeing 'synthetic' training as a total solution.

I have no expert knowledge of synthetic training, However it is in the public domain that a former RAF Typhoon Display pilot did his type conversion course entirely in the sim (to see if it could be done).

I vaguely remember seeing a programme about pilot trainees on a low-cost airline. I'm sure it said that the first time they flew an Airbus type jet for real was on their first pax carrying flight.
Surely that couldn't be right, could it?

Were they a crossover from another FJ type or an ab-initial with only Tucano/Hawk hours?

Indeed it could. Airlines have been doing Zero Flight Time conversions for some years now. The first trip however will have been done with a training captain and probably a “screen” FO.

The concept of Zero Flight Time training has been around much longer than most realise.
The first successful application utilising 100% synthetic training tools was over 50 years ago.

Zero flight time conversions are the normal now on modern airline types.
I often wonder when passing Brize why there always seem to be A400s and Voyagers bashing the circuit. I presume they came with Level D simulators, which negate the requirement in the civil world, for any Base training on a Conversion course.
The first time I flew a”real” B747-400 was as a Captain with a full load of pax to JNB. The Trainer in the RHS, was always the pilot who carried out your last sim before Route Training. The 2 FOs were normal line guys.(whoops, sorry, persons)
Obviously more hands on time is required for RAF military roles, but not on a conversion?

The A400 conversion is indeed almost entirely sim based with a couple of flights thrown in to emphasise the real world differences before line training is commenced. As it’s fly-by-wire like all modern Airbus aircraft there is no difference in feel between the sim & the real thing.

The aircraft bashing the circuit are the qualified guys trying to get their hours in to maintain currency given that there is relatively little flying on the squadrons.

It's easy to make the argument for ZFT for airline pilots who immediately move to a regular schedule of supervised live flying on completion of conversion training (current circumstances notwithstanding). It is a different matter for military crews who might have hundreds of hours of sim time but only a handful of live sorties under their belts when ordered into combat.

What happens to the “consequence of error” if most flying is synthetic, will operators take more risks and can that transfer to real flying?

I am (was) a qualified simulator instructor (Jaguar) with 10,000 real hours in my log book. All types. Simulation has it's place, especially for emergencies etc, but no substitute for the real thing. When I flew fast jets, 15 hours per month (real flying) was considered the minimum. OK, simulation has improved in leaps & bounds in the last 20 years, but will never be a total substitute, one does not crash & burn in a Sim.

Sharpend
 

For better or worse modern FJ flying doesn’t really need the same level of pure flying skill to stay current.

Since you mention the Jaguar I will use that as a barometer. 15 hours a month was a sensible minimum for the job and kind of flying we did.

The role and type of flying that Typhoon and F35 do makes it harder to insist on 15 hours of live flying per month.

For QFIs on the Hawk, that situation should look after itself.

BV

Thank you all for your contributions and views. To summarise:

It is feasible to train to convert / become competent on a plane entirely/primarily in a simulator.

Pilots need to fly real hours to remain current - but these don't necessarily need to be undertaken on the advanced asset.

Some things cannot be replicated in a simulator (primarily sensations such as 'g' or the 'fear' factor which can only exist when flying a real mission). But flying real missions risks being observed and there are significant issues with replicating credible /realistic threat environments in the air. Regards the latter, if a real mission isn't realistic 'what's the point?' (from an operational / training perspective).

Projecting forwards, there are several reasons not to fly the advanced assets very often. It's expensive, it is risky from a security perspective and it's hard to replicate missions. So these assets could sit around in pristine condition and flown a few hours a month. The pilots need to keep up their hours (this could be on a cheaper asset - Aeralis?), train in simulators and get a few hours/months in the main asset (to compare sim experience with real life).

The implications for industry /MoD which I alluded to in my reply to BV thus seem very real. Does anyone else have more to contribute?

Thank you, Scrimshankers

Old ground I know but if you don't practise with the complete weapon system in peacetime it is unlikely to be with you in wartime.

Going to war with a logistics, armament and engineering system that is untried and assumed will leave us with a willing pilot but precious few aircraft when peak demand comes around.

Why old ground? Well once we stopped regular independently monitored TACEVALs we decayed to the point where justifying trades (eg armourers etc) became increasingly difficult to the point where squadrons were simply not capable of performing on actual ops as a unit. Pulling the true required strength from non-deployed units to enable those actually deployed on ops to function became the norm. Even a bunch of us simple aircrew types started to realise that a more major conflict would leave us gutted of actual capability. The complete weapon system is much more than pilots playing in a synthetic universe.

So here we are, hoping that the support tail actually knows how to support multiple squadrons of aircraft that are hardly ever flown, with little maintenance and engineering practise required with 'combat readiness' stats being produced by the latest thrusters based on algorithms and modelling only fully endorsed by the bean-counters. Aircraft will spend many days or even weeks without being flown, being listed as 'serviceable' right until the point where you actually prep, fuel, arm and start the thing.

God help the frontline when they try and fix and turn an aircraft for a subsequent wave without loads of other not-due-to-fly-anytime-soon aircraft around them to either reach for or rob from. And you really have to pray for the trades that may have never undertaken their core role on a real flying aircraft under real conditions.

We live in a tactical universe where simulation has to augment peacetime flying. It has become an essential addition to the workload of frontline aircrew. We will bitterly regret allowing the augmentation required from simulation to becomes a replacement for the core business it was designed to support.

I will give you my pros and cons from a FJ perspective:

Pros - You can practice high end war fighting in a jet with all the relevant systems working against realistic threats (I.e. not a 1970s french business jet doing 0.6M )
- You do not have the EMCON constraints of live flying.
- If you are programmed for a 4 ship sim you will probably fly a 4 ship sim, live flying not so much.
- Debrief facilities generally allow for more in depth analysis of the mission.

Cons - The main one is that you do not develop rounded airmanship in a sim, clearly a sim helps, particularly with emergency handling, but so far sims have struggled to replicate the full spectrum of challenges that one encounters in the real world.
- Flying is not just about the aircrew, deploying a sqn and running a high tempo flying programme in an austere location clearly involve a huge 'whole force' effort. Good luck with deploying a Sqn that only fly, and engineer, a couple of jets a week, especially when those systems are highly complex.
- A recent USAF report into increased accident rates listed over reliance on synthetic training as one of the main contributing factors. It would suggest that we have already pushed the boundaries of what is safe.
- You can't pull G.

My personal view? 90% synthetic in unsafe, 50/50 probably just about works at the moment. Sims complement live flying.

On a similar theme, what is the thinking on the usefulness training weapons ranges?

An occasional use to drop the real thing at Garvie and also the odd Strafe so you get used to the clatter of the gun going off.

But hard to imagine much call for an half hour slot on the Dive Bomb target at Donna these days?

So, we cannot rule out North Korea, then!.

We don’t have 3/14kg practice bombs in the inventory any more (nor their full size KRET and KFF brethren) therefore in the absence of anything like a Laser Training Round it’s all a bit pointless - barring gunnery.

To be pedantic aren't some hawk T1s still using 3kg out of Leeming for JTAC training?

Several sectors you will find before his line training is completed. All the conversion work up for JSF solo is simulator is it not? I think Typhoon is going the same way too. Backseater trips for engineers is a thing of the past I hear from mates still in. Mate of mine that is engineering management had a go in the Cranwell rig yesterday. If it is a sim as well, the G loadings are there to add some realisim of forces. Of course they are not likely to ramp up at the rate a real airframe does. Then again it is not a sim set up by his pictures. However there is nothing I would see with present technology to have such a sim that is going to put realistic forces into a human body.

Thanks - I didn't know they had stopped (at least for the front line) that's fascinating.
'
I've seen 1000's of them dropped so it is the end of an era. Presume they finished with the Tornado.

I also assume the Spadeadam is not useful any more. I've no idea if it has modern threats these days but the practice of countermeasures would be severely limited.
Hard to see it providing anything a sim can't
When Spade opened in the late 70s ultra low level was a large part of the EW training - how times have changed.

We actually ditched the practice bombs and CBLS when the dumb bombs went out of service, some time around 2012ish.

Look up Desdemona (DESoriëntatie DEMONstrator Amst) and you might be surprised.

Not sure if they are still, but they definitely carried on after Tornado stopped using them in 2012 (as correctly stated by frodo_monkey). The reason was that the NATO STANAG for JTAC training required a minimum number of talk ons to ‘actual’ weapon releases to qualify as a controller. It was a ridiculous number when you consider that nothing changed for the trainee besides some ‘pressure’; it was more than the aircrew needed to get combat ready! Got to love NATO sometimes; I wonder if they’ve managed to change the STANAG yet.

So I'm guess that another business jet isn't the answer you are looking for once the current MSASS contract expires in December 2024? Seems understandable to me. Which brings me to the question of what do you want to replace Hawk T1 and Tranche One Typhoon with noting the likely fiscal constraints?

Well, What I would want would be a 4+ Gen dedicated Red Air Sqn backed up by something that can provide accurate EW threat rep. Say some F16s with Learjet backup or even with their own dedicated EW pods. Clearly that is as likely as me making CAS so in all honesty I think we would be best off investing in accurate synthetic threat rep rather than coming up with a half arsed airborne solution. Maybe whilst contributing to some sort of pan European/NATO Red Air for LFEs?

The cost for developing accurate synthetic threat rep is often as much as actually providing live threat rep aggressor aircraft. The Americans fell foul of this, realised it’s not the sole way to go, which is why we are seeing them buy every bit of COCO red air they can lay their hands on.