Page 89 - North Atlantic and Nordic Defense

North European and North Atlantic Defense: The Challenges Return

Question: What is your current status with the Cyclone?

Colonel Sid Connor: “We are now in the late stages of phase one of introducing the Cyclone into service. We
just started our first conversion-training course for pilots at the Wing.

“The training is being done as part of the ISS contract with Sikorsky at our training squadron here at the
Wing. We are in the process of taking ownership of the simulators as part of the standup of training as well.

Question: During our visit to the Cyclone, your staff provided an excellent overview to the aircraft, and
we discussed with them how the new technologies onboard the helicopter facilitated a change in the
work flow. The crew was sharing a common operational picture based upon which they could work as a
team.

In other words, it is not just about the technology but shaping a new workflow?

Colonel Sid Connor: “Absolutely. The tactical officers in the back of the aircraft are in charge of working the
missions, while the pilot focuses on flying the aircraft. That continues as a key thread but now there is a clear
opportunity to move tasks around onboard the aircraft as appropriate to the mission.

“Depending on the mission, and the conditions and different flight regimes, we will choose to push tasks that
are primarily done in the backend, we can actually push to the front end as appropriate.

“On an older aircraft, the two pilots in the cockpit focused almost exclusively on flying. Because the Cyclone is
a fly by wire aircraft, depending on the regime of flight, the aircraft is flying the aircraft.

“There will be a primary pilot who's monitoring aircraft flight and that frees up the second pilot to take on
some of those mission tasks, to be operating the EOIR system, for example, or adjusting the radar or taking
over tasks that maybe are not the primary task related to the mission you're doing, but is still important with
regard to augmenting information. It's information flow, management of information, for sure, that's going to
be important to keep that crew dynamic going.

“The Cyclone is an information rich aircraft and managing the flow of information to determine how best to
meet the task is a key challenge and opportunity generated by the new technologies onboard Cyclone.

Question: How have you prepared for the new workflow?

Colonel Sid Connor: “The first time we really analyzed this in any kind of detail for this platform, was during
a training needs analysis before the contractor award. We understood from the outset that the technology
that was going to be available would change the workflow. During different regimes of flight, who would be
doing which primary tasks?”

Question: One could make a simple point, namely that this is not a problem facing the Sea King, but it is
not a platform born in the information age. How are you shaping a way ahead to deal with the shift?

Colonel Sid Connor: “During takeoff the pilots are concentrating on flying. All the tasks will be done in the
back. As you get into different regimes of flight, especially if you're not going into the hover for example,
then the piloting task is less of a load. Therefore, the non-flying pilot would be able to take on some of these
other tasks, so we have worked through that approach. Now knowing the equipment that we're dealing with,
we've thought it through again. But we really won't know until we go out and test our assumptions in actual
operations.

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