Or the ceiling is less than 500', grounding your "all weather aircraft".
MPRA...Get. Out. Now.
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Budget Cuts and Flight/Simulator Training
- Thread starter Aquonox
- Start date
Or the ceiling is less than 500', grounding your "all weather aircraft".
MPRA...Get. Out. Now.
The battle I had getting the closed field ops restriction removed from our stan notes was just ridiculous. It's obvious P-3 guys have essentially no VFR flight time inside controlled airspace.
Once I finally did get the old man to sign off on it, that stupid closed field HAZREP from El Sal came out like a week later and everyone got all spooled up over it again.
What's the deal with this? You've mentioned it before but I don't know what you're referencing?
I remember hearing about that. Ridiculous to jump through all those hoops. Our Stan notes still allow it I believe, but we can't do it at night. As far as the HAZREP goes, I won't get into my thoughts on it here... but I think that'll say enough.
Yeah, sorry. I guess it isn't "public knowledge" yet. The P-8 is prohibited from flying in weather <500'. CommodoreMid was talking about waiting 4 or 5 hours to launch because of a low ceiling at Jax...
This is probably what bugs me the most about this community. Anytime someone institutes a policy or procedure under the auspices of Safety, it's impossible to remove. Never mind that by removing the restriction you increase operational capability and go from 99.999999% safe to 99.99999%.
I used to think it was because our toys are old, tired, and in short supply. Now it seems we've adopted the attitude because the new ones are too new, expensive, and high-viz.
Allegedly yes. Will the MPRA Safety mafia and good idea men eventually decide that we should keep it around, probably.
I wonder what their justification is for this? If anything, that plane should be allowed to do CAT II (or whatever it's rated for) mins. It has so much Gucci stuff on there that it's a lot safer than what we have now. Oh well, sucks for you guys. I'm still looking for the lowest ceilings everytime I go bounce.
I knew I wouldn't get away with just a generic critique of the sims, and good on ya for wanting details. Because I don't want to spend forever writing this up, here is a list, in no special order of my gripes with the sims. Some of them are Beaufort specific. All of them are Hornet specific.
-There are always glitches with the niche weapons (LMAV, SLAM-ER, Harpoon, HARM, etc) that don't act quite like they (or their CATMs) do in real life
-The LPOD doesn't really work the same, and for a long time there were issues when the gen 4 pods came out.
-You learn so much more about the gear and the jet when you actually fly. We discovered some issues with the hardware on the gen 4 LPOD 9 months after it came out because we were flying it in a unique climate.
-Comms aren't realistic, especially with HQ, Secure or Mids
-The sims take forever to get linked up, even when you do the propper coordination ahead of time.
-Sims routinely cancelled for maintenance (WTF?) or because training objectives couldn't be achieved (i.e. div lead flew with only one wingman because the other 2 sims went down)
-Red air not doing what its supposed to do, even with an experienced operator. In real life even if the red air screws up the setup, at least it will do something tactical, not just fly in circles at 30 degrees angle of bank like an idiot.
-SAMS not doing what they are supposed to do many times. ("dash two disregard, you aren't spiked I don't know what's wrong with the system right now)
-DTED only being funded for the area right around the main F-18 bases and Yuma airfield. If you do a CAS sim anywhere that isn't completely flat your laser handoffs will be kilometers off because of the difference between DTED and the visuals.
-shitty visuals, expecially in CAS (targets jumping up and down 100' in the air)
-SACT is stupid in the Sim
-The way EA is presented in the sim sucks compared to having real life EA with your red air
-Makes us sloppy with admin/tac admin because in the sim often you just jump straight into the tactical portion with that already set up
-Less experience troubleshooting the combat systems in the jet because they always work in the sim
There are ranges with real life emitters that are great training. Hell, they will even launch "smoky sams" up at you. They just won't actually guide on you. For that kind of training, the best thing is a having an IP simulate the missile with his aircraft, using dumps and burner. That is much better training than defending against a blip on the screen.
Again, I am not against sim training. In fact, I think we should have more sim training. What I am proposing is that we endeavor to make sim time cheaper and less "realistic" because its not all that realistic anyways (except for NATOPS and INST checks). With cheaper sim time, we can fly the same hours and still be saving money. For 90% of my sims I can get the same training value with a realistic stick and throttle and touch screens to simulate my DDIs. I would argue that for newer aircraft like the F-35 with even less switches, this is even more true. Moreover, these sims would be deployable too, so if we actually had to do a strike somewhere, the mission commander could practice it 2 or 3 times with different contingencies in the "cheaper" sim, before doing it for real. Kinda like how the SEALs built a replica of Bin Laden's compound and practiced assaulting it several times before doing the mission for real.
In reality the big expensive sims are a sunk cost, so they will continue to throw money at them to make the training marginally better and cut flight hours at the same time.
Pourts, thanks for the clarification. You're really talking aboout the limits of even our best networked sims in the advanced tactical environment and we would probably (mostly) all agree. And I'm with you 100% on the strategy of getting as many basic/fam/ep/inst events in the basic sims as possible even (and especially) for the old dudes. I was with you til your last comment. "Sunk" costs are made/paid for in the past and exist no matter which choice is made later. So if NAE correctly identifies the purchase of the big expensive sims as "sunk," when faced with the opportunity to purchase low-fi trainers as a low-cost way to meet training objectives that are now unaffordble in the aircraft, they will buy them just as you're suggesting. The issue is whether or not they apply the correct understanding of which costs are sunk and that, my friend, is the rub.
phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
It's a good thing that the airlines who have been flying the 737 for oh, about 40+ years aren't nervous ninnies...
I agree with 90% of your points, especially since my civilian job is in modeling & simulation (but more on the operator side of it), however I would like to make a few points:
Most (if not all) of your complaints can be overcome in simulators. The problem is - up until recently most simulation has been a cobbled-together system that attempts to mesh COTS with GFE/GFI to minimize cost. While you the "customer" of the simulator thinks that it's 100% purpose built, and they did a shitty job - the bean counters started with a requirement (realistically many years ago), tried to grab stuff they already owned (GFE/GFI) add in some COTS stuff and maybe have a handful of engineers working to integrate/find the problems. Some of these engineers may or may not have experience in the military (much less be aviators). Until recently, flight hours were the primary and fidelitly/realism (outside of cockpit displays/indications and moving switches) were largely an afterthought. Then they make block upgrades to the current system (because they've sunk so much money into it) and you end up with the buggy, unrealistic sim that does exactly what you describe. (for example - the sim we use at work utilizes 14 computers and 3 different operating systems, all networked together, to produce the simulation our student gets.)
For $20K/system - you could build an amazing gaming computer, include realisitic controls, virtual reality headset, etc... And use COTS software that would be 10X the realism that current sims have. Take that same system and add in a dome, projectors, etc... and you end up with a system that probably costs closer to $400-500K. Add in the abortion that is our acquisitions system - and you have a new sim in the $1.5-2.0M number. Those are the numbers the bean counters previously were looking at. In the current fiscal environment, I would be surprised if you didn't see them realize that the initial investment (call it $2.5M for system/training/support) will pay off in the long run. Like I said, our system is buggy and outdated - and it looks like funding will be pretty consistent for the next 10+ years. Because it's cheaper than doing it with live air. I think this is the future of simulation for aviation as well, upgrades/replacements and making simulation the priority for funding.
I'm guessing you don't have much experience with DVTE/VBS2 (MARCORSYSCOM program of record)... It's pretty much what you describe (at least on the ground side), comes in a pelcian case with everything needed to set it up and run it (and network it with other users), and it's funding has increased dramatically in the last couple years. I wouldn't be surprised if it starts making it's way to the air side (I was just
Yup, temporary flight restriction. It's coming from the VX/PMA types apparently, not 30 or group. Should be lifted relatively soon. We have a bunch of others, like AOB restrictions, etc., that should go away pretty soon. We've even had a bunch lifted during our transition phase.
On that flight we weren't so much annoyed at the TFR as we were that tower was calling such ridiculously low ceilings when we could see the P-3s in the pattern.
By "VBS2" do you mean the application Virtual BattleSpace by Bohemia Interactive? BIS also makes the Armed Assault series (and previously the Operation Flashpoint series), which is pretty much the only computer game I still play. It's amazing what that game engine can do for it being a jack of all trades simulation engine.