Parts of Training
Written by Kenya McCullum
PART-TASK TRAINERS ARE A COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTION FOR MILITARY TRAINING NEEDS.
If you want to see the benefits of excellent pilot training, you need look no further than Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the U.S. Airways pilot who earlier this year made an emergency landing in the Hudson River after the plane he manned lost its engines when it hit a flock of birds. This remarkable feat was accomplished through a combination of a cool head and a strong technical ability that all pilots—both commercial and military—need to perform their jobs. One way that this technical ability is fostered is through the use of part-task trainers—devices that allow students to learn specific parts of a mission and build those individual skills until they’re ready to move on to full mission training.
Keeping perishable skills current is imperative for military pilots, especially with the number of flight crews that are serving long tours of duty. Without regular training, pilots run the risk of suffering from the bathtub effect—a term that is used to describe the decline in knowledge and training readiness over time. When deploying individuals complete their deployment readiness cycle, their skills are at their peak. As they go out into the field and they’re not as actively involved in training exercises, these skills will incrementally wane the longer they have not been practiced. Once sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines return from their deployment and begin training again, their skills rise again. In order to avoid this cycle, which resembles a bathtub when charted out, the military is exploring ways to address the bathtub effect so that there are no huge dips in the servicemembers’ skill sets.
“As deployments are getting longer and longer, the bathtub effect is becoming more and more of a problem because the longer that you’re in the field, the less skilled you become in certain areas,” said Melissa Walwanis Nelson, senior research psychologist at the Training Systems Division, Naval Air Warfare Center. “We’re doing just fine in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re always looking toward the ‘what if’ scenario— what if we have to move to a different theater at any given point, and the people that were right there weren’t ready to execute the specific missions that needed to happen in that theater? We’d want a way to train them up and get them ready for that.” Part-task trainers can play an important role in combating the bathtub effect and keeping aviators’ skills at their peak. These devices are used in a number of ways and to train aircrews on any subset of a mission, depending on what the military’s specific training objectives are.
“The role of part-task trainers varies widely, all the way from undergraduate procedures training, to fleet readiness training, to battle group exercises,” said Joseph Sheehan, human systems analyst at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Training Systems Division. “It’s a really wide gamut the kinds of functions that a part-task trainer plays in the training continuum for a pilot and copilot.”
Additionally, part-task trainers are also useful tools for teaching skills to an aircraft’s maintenance crew by instructing them on the mechanics that they need to know, such as replacing the engine of a plane.
FINDING THE RIGHT TRAINER
Although part-task trainers can be used for a wide range of training, there are times when a full mission simulator is more appropriate to meet training goals. In order to ensure that the best device is being used for a particular training objective, the military must consider a number of factors.
Cost. One of the biggest characteristics that the military considers when deciding on what kind of trainer to purchase is whether it makes sense to spend money on a full mission trainer. To make this decision, the military performs a cost-benefit analysis that takes into account what skills need to be trained and whether there is an alternative on how to teach them. For instance if a task can be learned easily, requires a low cognitive domain, and is done frequently enough that students will not experience skill decay, it may not be necessary to purchase a part-task trainer in order to teach it. Instead, that skill may be teachable on a device that the military already owns or one that can also be used for the instruction of several skills.
For example, Ronald Hamada, training pipeline manager at the Graduate Flying Training Division of Directorate of Intelligence and Air, Space and Information Operations, explains how the Air Force performed this kind of analysis when trying to determine what device was most appropriate to train prospective aviators in a T-1 aircraft.
“When we originally developed the T-1 program, there were certain things that we were going to teach concerning operation of the avionics, the navigation equipment, and certain electrical equipment for the pilots in the simulator,” he said. “In practice, what we found out was that we couldn’t get enough time on the simulator because we were putting a whole lot of training in there, and teaching students how to operate the new avionics onboard the aircraft was getting to be a problem. So we went ahead and bought an avionics part-task trainer that we could teach the students and shift the training load away from the simulator.”
Realism. Another important characteristic that the military looks for when deciding on a training device is the amount of realism, or fidelity, it will provide trainees. Sometimes part-task trainers are chosen because of how accurate they are in tactile terms—if the devices have the same touch and feel of their real-world counterparts. In these cases, the trainers don’t necessarily need to be made from the same materials as the real part, as long as they recreate the same feeling. In other cases, the military looks for trainers that replicate the function of the real part of the aircraft—which can oftentimes only be accomplished by using the aircraft’s actual part.
“On one end of the spectrum, you have cardboard mock-ups that provide you with a spatially accurate representation— how far you have to reach and where you have to look to locate and operate certain items,” said Hamada. “On the other end, you have trainers that are not so physically accurate, but are functionally accurate and with very high fidelity replicate various functions within the aircraft.”
In order to successfully replicate these functions, it is imperative for a part-task trainer to have a high level of concurrency—meaning that as the supported aircraft platforms are upgraded, the trainers stay in step with the technological advancements. If the trainer is not concurrent with the aircraft technology, soldiers run the risk of adopting negative habit transfers and may not be able to adequately function in the real environment. On the flip side, sometimes the fidelity of part-task trainers are so advanced that they do not account for some of the limitations that can be found in the real world.
“If you have trainers that are linked together in a networked environment, in the real world it’s very hard to get all the people to move and go the same place at the same time. When you start approaching realism in that area, it gets really hard to manage the environment that you’re training in,” Hamada said. “One of the advantages of simulation is to be able to stop the simulation, talk to the students, work things through, and even replay it a number of times until you get the tasks right. When you’re in the real world, sometimes you can’t stop, and that kind of limitation becomes a problem when you approach the high end of the simulation.”
Another issue that must be considered in the discussion of fidelity is the level of training the soldiers are ready to experience. A trainee that is a novice in certain areas may actually find that working with a high-fidelity device is far too realistic and overwhelming. Although trainers teach skills such as how to handle surface and air threats, weather and a dense operational environment can be visually and auditorily realistic; for a new trainee they are far too advanced.
“Undoubtedly, you must have some amount of fidelity for this training intervention to transfer to the aircraft. However, too often aviators and many design developers just make the assumption that higher fidelity equates to higher training effectiveness—and that’s not necessarily the case at all,” said Sheehan. “In fact, if you’re training a novice and you have too much realism, the stressors that are introduced by that environment actually retard training and get in the way of the basics that the instructors are trying to teach. If I’m in sensory or cognitive overload, I am not able to learn, so realism really isn’t necessarily the target—it’s to go after the optimum degree of fidelity that is going to positively impact training.”
Other trainer characteristics. Another important consideration that guides the military’s choice of trainers is how many flying tasks a device can complete. The amount that makes sense will differ from task to task and from aircraft to aircraft. Likewise, the military also looks at how mobile devices are when evaluating which ones to use. A part-task trainer can usually be more easily moved from classroom to classroom—or even from country to country if trainees are deployed overseas. On the other hand, full mission trainers can be far too costly to transport and end up being left behind—putting trainees’ skills at risk of decay when they can’t brush up on them.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
A number of companies that partner with the military are currently developing upgrades and modernizations to current systems in order to help meet the aviation community’s training needs. Among the developments in the works are: Apache. Robert Abascal, president of AVT Simulation, said the company is in the process of updating its trainers for Apache helicopters in order to keep up with the rapid changes in avionics. According to Abascal, there are several perishable skills associated with this aircraft—thanks to the numerous buttons that soldiers must know how to operate—so it’s imperative that changes in part-task trainers are made quickly and frequently.
C-130. CAE USA and Boeing are participating in the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP), where they are taking old C-130 aircraft and adding modern avionics to them, including a computer-based flat screen cockpit. These are being created to teach crews skills such as how to load flight plans and use the plane’s buttons, which will prepare them to use a full-flight simulator. P-8A. Boeing and CAE USA have partnered to provide a device and software to train soldiers on this new maritime control aircraft, also known as the Poseidon. This trainer is being developed to replace the previous outdated model that the military had used for decades and is expected to be ready for training exercises in 2010.
Virtual avionics. The Simulation and Training Solutions Division of Rockwell Collins offers virtual avionics desktop trainers (VADTs) and virtual avionics procedures trainers (VAPTs) to support a number of military aircraft. These are constantly being modernized to keep up with the developments in avionics because as the aircrafts change, the trainers must follow suit.
As the technology of part-task trainers evolves, Hamada predicts that the military will continue to expand its use of these technologies—especially as they train younger, technologically savvy soldiers that are already accustomed to living and working in a virtual world.
“We’re going to continue to see a proliferation of these devices, and really, with the generation of students that we have these days, if you can teach them certain functions on part-task trainers, they transition very easily from one platform to another,” he said. “We used to spend a lot of time on hard-wired mockups— the things that you can touch and feel—because back in my generation, the way we learned was by touching and feeling. The kids nowadays are much more used to working in a virtual environment and even our equipment is going toward that kind of an environment. Our pilots are becoming more of a systems operator, rather than a seat-of-the-pants stick-andrudder flyer.” ♦