Training Day

Another step-change being introduced into Hercules training is the culture-shifting innovation of ‘seat agility’, in which aircrew are trained to conduct missions from either the left or right hand seat of the J model.

The Schoolhouse

Based at RAAF Richmond, 285SQN is responsible for Hercules training for personnel who will serve with Air Mobility Group’s collocated 37SQN. It currently undertakes 15 aircrew courses with 33 students, and 95 technical training courses for 825 personnel per year.

Helping 285SQN to deliver training is CAE, which has been involved in Australia’s C-130J-30 story since delivering the full-flight mission simulator (FFMS) in parallel with the aircraft’s delivery in 1999. This simulator was the world’s first Level 5D J model simulator, and has been recently upgraded with CAE’s Medallion-6000 visual system and common database (CDB) architecture. (Simply put, open database architecture is rapidly update-able and enables joint distributed mission training. Its implementation on simulators and training devices, according to CAE, “significantly enhances interoperable training and mission rehearsal capabilities, while reducing development time, configuration control and associated database development costs. ”) The heart of the training remediation program are the synthetic training aids and computer-based training system delivered by industry partners such as CAE, Lockheed Martin, Jacobs and Australia’s Virtual Simulation Systems. These learning tools include Lockheed Martin Multi-function Training Aid (MFTA) and virtual maintenance trainer (VMT) and CAE’s Simfinity Virtual Simulators. These software-driven teaching aids replace the textbook/classroom model with computerised, simulation-based courseware in which learning is more student-led. The net effect, and indeed aim of the TRP, has been to ‘unload’ both actual aircraft and the FFMS from training ‘events’, increasing the availability of the former for operational tasking and the latter for mission training and rehearsal.

285SQN commanding officer WGCDR Jason Baldock explained how growing operational requirements spurred a ground-up revision of the C-130J’s training system.

There was a large training burden that was felt to be unsustainable for the output of capability we needed to achieve. WGCDR JASON BALDOCK

“In July 2014, AMG (Air Mobility Group) endorsed 285SQN to go down a training remediation path, and a Development Flight was stood up to implement the project. Based around pilot training initially, the legacy system that had been around since ’99 was considered deficient and unsustainable with regards to amount of time required to train aircrew to a capability standard that we could then employ in operations. There was a large training burden that was felt to be unsustainable for the output of capability we needed to achieve,” WGCDR Baldock said.

“We scoped a number of different units, in Australia and overseas, but it was through our observations of the Royal Canadian Air Force that we really decided to model our system on theirs. We took our specs from their CP-140 Aurora training system, that’s where pilot initial qualification (PIQ) comes from. We borrowed from other organisations, but the RCAF is where most of the model came from. It also made sense because the model we were trying to emulate was supported by CAE. ” The system was not adopted wholesale, however, with 285SQN personnel travelling to Canada to review the RCAF’s PIQ and loadmaster courseware. According to one instructor at the squadron, upwards of 15,000 amendments were eventually made.

VSIM

Future aircrew and loadmasters begin training on the C-130J with CAE’s Simfinity Virtual Simulator (VSIM) and software.

“Instructors spend less time in lessons, more time in the background making the lessons better. Essentially, students go through and teach themselves,” a CAE representative outlined during a recent media visit to 285SQN.

“In a typical lesson set-up, students will go through three screens, with different information presented on each. Screen 1 will have a topic overview, with supporting media shown on screens 2 and 3. Sometimes there’s animation or slideshows. Students are given gates, and will have to complete three or four lessons, with the pace of learning up to them. We instructors float around and usually at the end of the day we sit with them and go through the content covered to support learning. At the end of the lesson, there’s a summary. Then we test their knowledge with a series of questions. Some lessons take two hours to complete, like the engines, which is a difficult, in-depth subject. ”

VMT

In a large, windowless room at 285SQN’s building at RAAF Richmond are arranged rows of desks with multiple, linked screens.

“We teach maintenance teams at 37SQN how to maintain the C-130J,” SGT Hutchens, a technical instructor with 285SQN, explained.

“We use the learning content management system. This was devised after the RCAF purchased their J models, and had some money left over for a training suite. Lockheed Martin then developed a training package, which in conjunction with IBM developed Kenexa, which is like Powerpoint on steroids. It gives the user the ability to display multiple items across three screens at the desk and removes the need for paper-based workbooks. What students need to study comes up on monitor 1, with the rest of the lesson being displayed on the remaining screens.

“This software was built and designed for the user to come back and study at their own pace outside the instructional lesson. It also links in and out of other systems; the key one we have is from CAE, which runs Simfinity software, that the simulator runs off. It emulates the aircraft for the sake of training – we can input faults and it gives us the ability to solve them using 3D models. You can see a three-dimensional engine or propeller, and it can be pulled apart, you can take components off, dissect it, spin it around. It’s really good training value above what we used to have. ”

Seat Agile

With the training remediation program comes a new way of training aircrew for the two-crew flightdeck of the C-130J. The term ‘seat agile’ describes aircrew graduating from 285SQN able to fly the Hercules from the left or right hand seat.

“Seat agility is a very big deal for us, because the tiller, to steer the aircraft on the ground, is only on the left hand seat. So all that affects ground handling on unsurfaced strips, and emergency handling like aborts and engine failures with huge yawing moments that turboprops generate,” WGCDR Baldock explained.

“All that means an extensive suite of training to new students flying in the left hand seat. We’ve redesigned our category system and level of supervision for the students, post PIQ, and this is where the on-the-job training rolls in, where they increase skills and bed them down under supervision of senior captains at 37SQN. ” WGCDR Baldock added: “The first PIQ only graduated last year, they’ll only come through command transition in third quarter this year. That will write the story of how this will go. We won’t know about this system until those captains become senior captains and QFIs.

It will change the way we assess our people for captaincy and command.

” Currently, qualified aircrew have four cyclic training events that they do in the simulator, and they have a ‘currency horizon’ of six months.

Broken down, the training events in the simulator cover tactical sequences, emergency handling, cockpit resource management, finishing with an instrument rating test. WGCDR Baldock explained that once posted operationally, 37SQN’s newly converted aircrew could expect to be back at ‘the schoolhouse’ for a total of nine months over the course of a five year tour.

“This is opposed to a year and a half previously, so it’s a big saving in time with an operational pilot out there doing ops rather than the training. ”It will change the way we assess our people for captaincy and command.

The expanded role of the J model Herc has naturally fed into the training syllabus of the type, with a resulting increase in the pilots course’s intensity.

“We’re pushing students so much faster and harder in the first six months. The traditional version of C-130 training, they’d only be trained in strategic ops, in other words, A to B type missions, with some overseas with a little bit of tactical flying, which was enough to sustain us in the Middle East. Now, it’s night, low-level navigation, platform drops, unsealed, and so much more that we’re putting into the students in the first six months. ” Despite this much expanded suite of missions, the number of ‘serials’, or live training flights, has been reduced, thanks to increased simulation time.

Simulator Time

The employment of synthetic training aids in aircrew tuition has the net benefit of freeing up valuable simulator time for more operationally-focused lessons.

Procedures training has been migrated to the Lockheed Martin-designed and delivered Multifunction Training Aid, a relatively low fidelity cockpit mockup located in 285SQN’s sprawling complex.

A total of 32 training events that would have previously been performed in the simulator are now done on the MFTA, allowing more operationally-focused scenarios to be honed in the FFMS. This sees the device heavily utilised, running from 7am to 11pm five days a week, but despite such a heavy workload, there exists no plan presently to grow the number of simulators at 285SQN beyond its sole example.

Post Sim Debrief

Before and after a simulated mission in the simulator, student and instructor will repair to a debrief room to preview or review the flight in order to maximise learning opportunities. The student’s flight is recorded on CAE’s Flightscape Vers 2. 0, a debriefing tool that takes data from numerous inputs in the sim, including cameras.

Project engineer Katrina Monkley outlined how this tool aided instructors and students alike: “We take a live feed from the cameras and head-down displays (altitude profile bar) which gives an idea of terrain. The cameras have three views: daytime, night time, and tactical layout. Instructors can reposition cameras to see how aircrew are responding to simulated ground threats such as AAA or MANPADS; afterwards, they can export this footage in movie format to an iPad and the student or instructor can take it home and study it. We can archive these recordings, and can find students who have done a perfect takeoff or training scenario, and can use that as a training aid to prepare students before a simulator session. It can be used to show students’ progressions during training, or to see how mistakes are possibly reoccurring. ”

Tact

The last 18 months has seen the introduction of the tactical airlift crew trainer (TACT) at 285SQN’s facilities at RAAF Richmond. TACT uses virtual reality technology to simulate the cargo hold of a C-130J by means of helmet-mounted displays that create an immersive VR environment. Procedures and threat spotting are the primary focus of the TACT for now, with simulated air drops envisaged some years hence, as is the trainer’s linking with the FFMS to create a whole-of-crew simulation event.

WOFF Sam Lacey is a loadmaster and flight commander at 285SQN. He outlined the value of practising procedures in a ground-based simulator as opposed to a live aircraft: “As loadies flying operationally, we’re sitting near the paratroop doors, behind armour, we’ve got ballistic armour on, we’ve got helmets on, communicating with the front end, if it’s night time, we’re wearing NVGs and potentially getting ready for an air drop mission, plus taking down coded information that’s coming in over the radio, and we have to train for all that. Previously, we would be flying around on training sorties over NSW, looking out the window and you’d say, if you see a tractor, ‘that’s a SAM being launched against the aircraft’, and you have to call it; a ute would have been AAA being launched and so on. It wasn’t really good training – a bit of negative learning. The TACT, we use virtual reality, and a replica of the cargo hold, plus full projected images to immerse the loadie students into a virtual C-130J. ” In a hangar sits two wing-less E model Hercules, which are used for basic aircraft loading training. Since they lack commonality with the J model, their training utility is limited and there currently exists a requirement to replace them with a C-130J fuselage trainer (FuT).

The Future

It’s been a dynamic 18 months for the personnel of 285SQN and 37SQN.

“There’s been a lot of change and new capability coming onto the aircraft itself and they’ll need to be fed into the courseware and simulation devices we’ve got,” WGCDR Baldock reflected.

“We need time to bed down software architecture and see how it can tie into classified networks in Australia and those of our coalition partners for live constructive events. That’s where our efforts will be directed. ” “We now do three flying serials. The first is a day flight, then an international flight to PNG, over four days, and the third flying serial is a five-day tactical completion of the whole course, where we roll in everything we can – formation, live air drop and flares. ”