Page 93 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

NOVEMBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
AIRPOWER 93
Sibree, Brisbane-based Managing Director of CAE Indo- Pacific Defence and Security.
“The KC-30A training is for both pilots and air refuel- ling officers (AROs); at RAAF Richmond we deliver C-130J training in aircraft and simulators together with a fuselage trainer, the pilot and loadmaster training environments and the maintenance training environment.
“At Nowra we have instructors as well as device main- tainers. The work is subcontracted to CAE USA who then interface with the US Navy because of some of the sensi- tivities around the MH-60R.
“At Williamtown and Pearce our Hawk simulator in- structors generally double up as RAAF Reserve pilots, which allows us to attract a very high calibre of instructors who remain current across operating procedures and take that back to the sim. On the C-130J, CAE delivers training both in the live aircraft and the simulators.
“At Townsville we subcontract the device sustainment scope of work to Thales. Across the MRH 90 the Common- wealth retains uniformed instructors.”
The Army’s CAE-manufactured Black Hawk simulator, com- missioned at Oakey in 2008 and described at the time as the world’s most advanced helicopter simulator, was retired earlier this year after 27,000 hours usage. By contrast, the heaviest- flown Black Hawk notched less than 6,000 flight hours.
CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY
As an example of how government and industry can partner to deliver cutting-edge technologies, CAE Australia and technol- ogy company Seeing Machines recently collaborated to install and integrate a crew training system that features precision eye- tracking technology on the three CAE-built Hawk Mk.127 full- mission simulators used as part of the RAAF’s lead-in fighter training program at RAAF Bases Williamtown and Pearce.
The eye-tracking technology improves aircrew training
LEFT: CAE and Seeing Machines recently collaborated to install and integrate a crew training system that features precision eye- tracking technology on the three CAE-built Hawk Mk.127 full- mission simulators
OPPOSITE PAGE: Training in the CAE KC-30A simulator at Amberley, 33 Squadron pilots approach a simulated USAF KC-135 tanker
by providing objective insights and detailed data on where pilots are looking during training sessions in the simulator. “We believe with further research we can understand through the analysis of a student’s biometric data we can assess cognitive capacity and where they sit on the learning
curve,” Sibree said.
“Through a combination of Artificial Intelligence and
adaptive training scenarios, simulated missions can be tailored to a student’s learning capacity to optimise both training outcomes and reduce the time taken to train.
“In historical training, every pilot either passed or failed in a certain period of time and everyone went through the same training curriculum. With tailoring, if you’ve got a re- ally good student, you can accelerate them through the cur- riculum whereas if you’ve got someone who just takes a little longer to learn, you can adjust the scenarios accordingly.”
COVID-19 had initiated new approaches such as off- board instructor operator stations, virtual instructor-led classroom training and remote acceptance testing on train- ing devices, Sibree noted.
However, it had also accelerated trends to which defence forces were moving already – digital immersion technologies like virtual reality; leveraging synthetic environments for not just training, but also planning, analysis and decision support; and looking more holistically at multi-domain operations and the integration of air, land, maritime, space and cyber.
“We need to prepare for a future that is contested in a multi-domain environment with a peer or near-peer adver- sary, and a secure virtual world will be the only way to do so because of time, cost and the prying eyes of adversaries,” Sibree stated.
“The challenges for all air forces going forward are that aircraft and live flight are not getting any cheaper, but air- craft are so capable that they cannot not be used in a train- ing area to their full capacity.
CAE