No more CQs?

[Brett327]

Broader perspective... The NAE's ultimate goal is to get aircrew into their fleet T/M/S so they can start flying tactically sooner. The general philosophy is that if technology can facilitate that - either through better, workload reducing flight control systems, improved CVI, or automating basic tasks, the more aircrew can focus on tactics. Moreover, the desire is for the average first tour aviator to show up at their first ARP event at a higher level of basic readiness and tactical proficiency. Lots of other things have to fall into place to make that happen, like a full stable of truly FMC aircraft throughout the OFRP and the flight hours to do real training, but we have folks in the E/F/G communities showing to ARP lacking proficiency at basic mech. The sooner we get folks performing at a truly advanced level in ARP, the more we can push them at AWF, which prepares them better real conflict. The streamlining of the TRACOM pipeline is one piece of this puzzle.

 

[Python]

In the Airbus, the FBW has laws. The pilot commands the controls by moving the stick and the FBW determines how much to move the controls. Normal law is the highest and provides the most protections. If you direct the airplane out of certain angle of bank, angle of pitch or g limitations; it limits the flight controls so you won't exceed the programmed limits. I can yank the stick full back and leave it there and it will never hit stall AOA. You can't do steep turns in training in normal law because you can't bank it enough. If equipment breaks, it drops to a lower level of protect with alternate law still providing some protections and direct law not providing any. In direct law, the flight controls do exactly what the pilot tells it to do.

Similarly we have "FBW" throttles, "FBW" brakes and "FBW" nose wheel steering. The steering and brakes are interesting because it depends on the rate of peddle depression or tiller movement vice the amount. I can push the brakes all the way to the floor really slowly and not slow at all or I can barely tap them quickly and stand the plane on its nose. Throttles are easy but the steering and brakes take a while to get used to.

Anyway, for flight controls FBW is just how the control inputs get to the control surfaces. All the magic stuff is handled by the computer also attached into the system.

Yup. Same thing in VFA jets. Hornet has various laws: “Up and away” “powered approach” “PLM” etc. The F-35 calls their laws “CLAWs” (control laws, clever). But your description of moving the stick is what gets the FBW to command which controls to move is exactly the same. The Hornet throttles weren’t “FBW” but the Rhino and F-35 were.

 

[Farva01]

I'd say there's a better than average chance the new trainer will also be the new adversary platform.

If only an enterprising VFA CO would research and write a white paper outlining such a future.

That guy is just a washed up pilot now.

 

[Brett327]

That guy is just a washed up pilot now.

On my last cruise, our VAQ "Big XO" probably flew with us twice over the course of a year... and he was an NFO with no real currency requirements. Happy Festivus, Farva.

 

[wlawr005]

Our CO flew a day tanker line about every other day. Couldn't get into MIDS or anything like that, but was a bro nonetheless

 

[insanebikerboy]

As with any jet thread, a helo threadjack is in order...

I’ll see your helo thread jack and raise you an Air Force thread jack...

There’s a concerted push in the Air Force to reduce the time to train by reducing hand flying events and relying more on automation, be it sims or using automation in the jet. There have been a few recent fatality mishaps by young guys (post wings) that have caused concern amongst folks that maybe there is too much reliance on automation early on.

Anecdotally, I see young guys in the tanker that are afraid of hand flying approaches, or raw navaid (no flight director) approaches.

To me, growing up in Naval Aviation, I always heard that landing a jet on a carrier was the hardest thing to do in a plane. Hearing that there’s a push to do away with the early-on, hand flying CQ seems like a recipe for disaster later on.

 

[wlawr005]

I think people who don't use PLM have this misconception that it's some sort of auto-land feature. In reality, it's a set of dynamic control laws that decouples all three flight axis. Instead of making a glide slope correction and then needing a corresponding power correction, you only need to make a glideslope correction. Same for line up corrections, no corresponding glide slope corrections needed. Nothing has fundamentally changed in flying the ball, or anything leading up to the start, including flying around the carrier. A pilot's professional reputation still starts and ends behind and around the ship.

I wonder what all the Midway guys would say about angled decks and I would love to hear the Crusader guys bitch about how the HUD is going to destroy Naval Aviation. I personally think PLM is in that same category as far as revolutionary carrier technology. It's not like we're pulling the trigger on some unknown tech, we've been employing it across all airwings for almost half a decade now.

 

[insanebikerboy]

I think people who don't use PLM have this misconception that it's some sort of auto-land feature. In reality, it's a set of dynamic control laws that decouples all three flight axis. Instead of making a glide slope correction and then needing a corresponding power correction, you only need to make a glideslope correction. Same for line up corrections, no corresponding glide slope corrections needed. Nothing has fundamentally changed in flying the ball, or anything leading up to the start, including flying around the carrier. A pilot's professional reputation still starts and ends behind and around the ship.

I wonder what all the Midway guys would say about angled decks and I would love to hear the Crusader guys bitch about how the HUD is going to destroy Naval Aviation. I personally think PLM is in that same category as far as revolutionary carrier technology. It's not like we're pulling the trigger on some unknown tech, we've been employing it across all airwings for almost half a decade now.

How does a LSO grade passes for someone using PLM? And how do the award top hook for each period if the F-18s are all using PLM while the fat kids (C/E-2) are still doing it by hand?

My take, and it’s for all aviation (from general aviation to top end military), there’s too much reliance on automation early on. Learn to fly and land the aircraft by hand and then incorporate automation.

Poignant to this discussion. https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09...real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/

 

[wlawr005]

How does a LSO grade passes for someone using PLM? And how do the award top hook for each period if the F-18s are all using PLM while the fat kids (C/E-2) are still doing it by hand?

My take, and it’s for all aviation (from general aviation to top end military), there’s too much reliance on automation early on. Learn to fly and land the aircraft by hand and then incorporate automation.

Poignant to this discussion. https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09...real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/

I could talk about grading passes all day, but to sum it up....in an airwing grades influence behaviors. If you exhibit behaviors that airwing LSOs don't wanna see (like bad starts, bad intervals, poor waveoff techniques) you're going to get bad grades. PLM still requires corrections inside the ball call, lazy PLM flyers are also awarded bad grades. Flying MOVLAS and didn't listen to paddles? Bad grade.

In short, there are many gradable items to a pass that don't reflect just glide slope deviations and have nothing to do with PLM.

You can still fly a shitty PLM pass. It's not as "automated" as you're inferring. And no one really cares about awards, so things like Top Hook can be used for boosting morale and/or making fun of people....like it should be. As long as you're safe around the boat who gives a shit who's Top Hook?

(Unless your airwing uses GPA to establish who's at 2K in the stack, then grades are very, very important.....don't show your ass beind the ship.)

 

[Python]

How does a LSO grade passes for someone using PLM? And how do the award top hook for each period if the F-18s are all using PLM while the fat kids (C/E-2) are still doing it by hand?

My take, and it’s for all aviation (from general aviation to top end military), there’s too much reliance on automation early on. Learn to fly and land the aircraft by hand and then incorporate automation.

Poignant to this discussion. https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09...real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/

The key is what @wlawr005 is saying. PLM is not automation in the traditional sense. You are still hand flying. The jets’ computer magic is giving a huge assist in both the creation/destruction of lift, as well as correction mechanics. But it is not autoland. You HAVE to still fly.
Again, with v40 software, PLM is so redundant that if there’s enough failures or degradations to cause a PLM failure, the jet would be in a divert/ejection situation anyway. Think single engine, AOA failures, control surface failures, etc. All accounted for. I watched VX-23 come aboard with PLM and deliberately frozen control surfaces....rails passes, all of them.

 

[insanebikerboy]

The key is what @wlawr005 is saying. PLM is not automation in the traditional sense. You are still hand flying. The jets’ computer magic is giving a huge assist in both the creation/destruction of lift, as well as correction mechanics. But it is not autoland. You HAVE to still fly.
Again, with v40 software, PLM is so redundant that if there’s enough failures or degradations to cause a PLM failure, the jet would be in a divert/ejection situation anyway. Think single engine, AOA failures, control surface failures, etc. All accounted for. I watched VX-23 come aboard with PLM and deliberately frozen control surfaces....rails passes, all of them.

Ok, that makes more sense.

Are there any negative transfers/trends if PLM is inop, or is it just a higher workload on the pilot?

 

[wlawr005]

PLM can't be inop. If the flight controls were so degraded PLM didn't work, the flight controls would be too degraded to land on the ship manually. Hence the divert/eject scenario.

 

[nittany03]

PLM can't be inop. If the flight controls were so degraded PLM didn't work, the flight controls would be too degraded to land on the ship manually. Hence the divert/eject scenario.

And at some point, the manualness becomes so pointless that it's negative training to teach. Looks like they've hit that point.

As an analogy, the whole point of your jets having a "high order language" (which I'm told is C++, which is itself decades old) is because developers don't work in assembly anymore. It'd be counterproductive if they did, because they'd have a greater chance of screwing up to be less effective/efficient at getting you cool shit like PLM.

 

[wlawr005]

And at some point, the manualness becomes so pointless that it's negative training to teach. Looks like they've hit that point.

As an analogy, the whole point of your jets having a "high order language" (which I'm told is C++, which is itself decades old) is because developers don't work in assembly anymore. It'd be counterproductive if they did, because they'd have a greater chance of screwing up to be less effective/efficient at getting you cool shit like PLM.

To sort of dog hump this, PLM isn't a box, a switch, a servo, or a button. It's just ones and zeros that allow the TEFs to move when the flap switch is set to HALF or FULL as opposed to being held in a fixed position like they used to be. So.....asking what happens if it's inop is like asking what happens if both of the FCCs fail. The short answer to that, both before and after PLM, is nothing good.

For the past five years, PLM has been in a sort of gray area with redundancy. No one knew or tested all the oddball, one-off scenarios like multiple flight control surfaces failed with a single engine. If those things happened, the general consensus was to go manual if required. The latest version of PLM, V40, has been long awaited to hit the fleet due to the extensive redundancy that's actually been tested. They put it through enough situations behind the boat that the engineers are confident and can prove the airplane is recoverable under any conceivable flight envelope. If you can land it on the boat, you will be able to do it with the existing flight control laws.

 

[SynixMan]

Unfortunately based on responses not sure if I was that clear overall. I would imagine we actually are in a fair amount of agreement here - I am totally for this move - as long as these hours are replaced with hours flying the jet, either the F18 or the T45 - which I don't think is going to happen, based on the fact that CNATRA has already eliminated flights in the syllabus in an effort to get people to the fleet faster - whether that be in Kingsville/Meridian or 122/106. Ie - if you eliminate 4 hours of FCLPs, please add 4 hours to do more DCAs, 3 more high aspect flights, 2 more CAS flights - whatever it is, just do more tactical flights, so I'm pretty sure we agree on most of this. And to your point that a cone should be able to bingo to Oceana and shoot an approach - yeah, that's already standard and totally expected - but you can't brief that as standard after talking about it once without the amount of hours spent in the T-45 under the bag (hood) shooting approaches, etc. Have to be brilliant at the basics so you can eat the bigger fish. Same principle is going to apply to CQ ... the system can only do so much for you. I hate to say this but I am venting about an overall dissatisfaction with training that probably does not apply specifically as well to this situation, so I apologize for the rant.

Totally fair and sounds like we're in agreement. I have similar complaints about Helo Advanced. The syllabus is so tied to an old, quirky airframe that we waste valuable flight hours training to contingencies that aren't relevant once they leave that platform. I'm generally skeptical of changes like these, but I think this one makes sense.