What exactly is it?

In a typical distributed training episode, a flight of four F-15C fighters from Eglin AFB, Fla., would join a flight of F-16s from Shaw AFB, S.C. At the same time, controllers aboard an E-3 AWACS from Tinker AFB, Okla., would choreograph an attack against an enemy target while an adversary force from Nellis AFB, Nev., would be hostile fighters. As they near the objective, Air Force pilots would see not only their wingmen but also the land battle, enemy interceptors, and bursts of anti-aircraft fire.

Here's the news: None of the participants in these exercises would ever leave their home stations.

Thanks to a new generation of telecommunications and aircraft simulators with computer-generated visual effects, Air Force operators of the future are going to be able to experience virtually all conditions of combat at more or less the same time, despite being separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. They won't face just a computer-simulated threat. They will interact with other friendly aircraft and with enemy airplanes. They will not only observe but also be part of the larger air-ground battle.

The Air Force took a major step toward this advanced training format this spring when it opened its first ground-based F-15C Mission Training Center at Eglin. Plans called for the start of training in July at another F-15C MTC, this one at Langley AFB, Va. The Air Force will follow up in 2001 with the AWACS center at Tinker and an F-16C site at Shaw. The adversary force at Nellis will come after those, as will a number of additional centers at other sites.

Distributed Mission Training, known as DMT, is being developed in a number of forms throughout the Air Force. In Air Combat Command, the focus is on aircrew training, or DMT-A. Another program, DMT-C2, will train operators of AWACS. The Air Force later will add bombers and other weapon systems.

When the whole program is up and running, the full array of battle elements will be linked in what officials term a "system of systems." The result is what you might get if you crossed a video game, a wide movie screen, and theme-park adventure ride.

What it Does

Maj. Edward Maxwell, chief of ACC's Distributed Mission Training Team, said the Air Force has moved beyond the basic procedural task trainers and has begun to use simulation to train pilots in advanced combat tactics and concepts.

"While we used to focus on predominantly task-oriented use of simulators, we are now focusing on training team and interteam skills," said Maxwell. "Obviously, to do this you need a much more advanced simulator. We require high-fidelity systems with full-field-of-view visual systems to produce an accurate representation of what you would expect to encounter in actual flying and in combat."

It's not just that the new equipment will provide more realism than conventional simulators. DMT will also allow pilots in one location to interact with those in other, geographically separated locations as though they were in the same airspace.

The Eglin F-15C MTC, for example, will have four high-fidelity advanced simulators. Pilots can use them individually as they have used older simulators, but the four also will be linked together so that four pilots can "fly" in formation and practice unit combat tactics. And, as other training centers come on line, pilots at any center will be able to train with a variety of widely scattered units.

The potential of DMT is particularly appealing to the Air Force as it develops its new Air Expeditionary Forces, formed of scattered units and tailored to meet specific contingencies.

Physically assembling this variety of units for training on a regular basis would be prohibitively expensive and logistically challenging. Environmental concerns, safety factors, civilian competition for the airspace, and the problems caused by high optempo add to the problem.

"Think about the AEF," said Hawley, who retired July 1. "This is a collection of units from across the Air Force that is a virtual organization made up of perhaps eight or 10 different squadrons. It's made up of earmarked ground [forward air control] people, combat communications, and RED HORSE and Prime BEEF [construction and engineering teams], which are all the elements that it takes to deliver combat power to the [theater commander in chief].

"What's better to prepare them for their task in the theater than to train together in a distributed crew training environment, without having to incur the further optempo of deploying someplace in order to work together?"

The possibility of linking these geographically separated units electronically and exposing them to realistic, albeit artificial, combat environments has thus spurred the Air Force's interest in taking simulation to new levels.

Making it Feel Real

From the earliest days of flight, simulation has remained a game of make-believe. In theory, the closer the trainer can approximate the conditions of actual flight, the better pilots will be able to handle the real thing.

The new generation of simulators carries that philosophy a step further. An individual trainer can include mechanisms to shake the pilot's seat and flight controls, imitating turbulence. The visual system can be jittered to give the illusion that the ship has been hit by a flak burst or missile. And, wraparound, computer-generated presentations can give the pilot the sense of flying through a real sky and over real terrain.

The technology for creating these make-believe environments has exploded in recent years, driven in no small degree by Hollywood's special effects departments. Theater seats jolt moviegoers as they watch an earthquake, and stereophonic sound puts them in the midst of battles. Wide Imax screens give roller coasters a stomach-turning realism.

From Disney World to Caesar's Palace, "rides" that are no more than visual effects send patrons on harrowing adventures. For those who can't make it to a theme park, computer software brings into the home computer anything from a World War I dogfight to a stealth fighter mission.

The services have drawn on the advances of both the aviation and entertainment industries to add reality to their simulators. The question, at times, has been which technology to exploit.

The Army, for example, has been exploring the virtual reality approach, which uses helmet-mounted visuals and strap-on sensors to give the wearer the illusion of being in the action. The Air Force has not ruled out that technology as a future possibility, but, at the moment, it is concentrating on using actual cockpit hardware and creating a virtual world around it with artificial, full-field-of-vision presentations.

Either way, the object is the same-to immerse the pilot in his environment so that he comes out, as Hawley said, "smiling and sweating."

It seems to be working. The Air Force Research Lab's Warfighter Training Research Division at Mesa, Ariz., has a four-ship high-field-of-view F-16 simulator; USAF has been running some testing and training programs using actual aircrews. "Recently," said Maxwell, "they had a pilot in there who was actually performing a g-straining maneuver, tightening the muscles that he would need during advanced combat maneuvering. Yet he was sitting in 1g, so the realism is there, and we have to assure it will be there to create a high-threat, high-immersive environment."

That environment is likely to become even more convincing in the future. In current simulators, most of what the pilot sees is computer-generated, but the Air Force is exploring possibilities of adding photo-realistic imagery to it. This means overlaying even more convincing images on the artificial landscape to provide the randomness and subtle color variations that computer generation lacks.

Beyond that, there are still more imaginative possibilities. One, still little more than a concept, is laser-generated targeting. At least in theory, it could paint objects onto the imagery so realistically that the pilot would not just see a representation of his wingman's airplane or of an oncoming enemy but have the sense that they actually were there.

One of the aims of the DMT approach is to take advantage of such improvements as they come along. "In the simulation world," said Maxwell, "there is something called open architecture. We are trying to structure the development of these systems on that principle, which will allow much easier integration of other systems and other capabilities as they occur."

Combat in a Hangar

If the only object were to give Air Force pilots a more realistic feel of flying, however, there would be no need for the Distributed Mission Training effort. Improved individual simulators would be enough.

The real object of DMT is to help train aircrews not only to fly but to fight-alone, in groups, and with the full array of supporting elements and opposing forces. This means expanding the one-pilot cockpit environment into something close to a real-time aerial view of a war and then making the pilot an interactive part of it.

In effect, a Mission Training Center can stage such an air or air-ground battle with all the elements, from friendly forces to enemy aircraft to ground units, both ours and theirs. More important, the pilot in one simulator can react to the actions of all these elements and, in turn, have impact on them by his own actions.

In short, DMT is designed to make the participants not just observers of some high-cost video game but active players.

ACC has used much the same approach for years in its Red Flag exercises at Nellis, where pilots train with other Air Force units and a variety of other combat elements. In fact, USAF is drawing heavily on the Red Flag experience in designing its DMT approach. Like Red Flag, for example, DMT will incorporate stand-ins for the opposition forces. Instead of flying aircraft disguised as the potential enemy, however, the "bad guys" will operate threat consoles linked to the simulators. In effect, they will fly against the trainees, both attacking and reacting to being attacked.

Only the opening scenarios of such battles will be scripted, officials say. Once the forces begin to interact, no training session will develop like any other.

"We can have them flying against real people, not just computers," said Hawley. "I think that's a very important part of the synthetic training environment-you've got to be able to fly against more than a computer-generated threat."

Nor do all of the site's simulators need to be occupied to stage a war. A DMT can as easily take a single pilot through a combat mission with just as much realism. In this case, console operators populate both sides of the fight, some flying the friendly aircraft and some the opposition.

In addition, the computer can generate anything from a civilian aircraft that must be avoided to an unknown that must be identified to a hostile that must be destroyed. It also can fill the ground environment with opposing forces, from tanks to individual troops to heavy artillery. Theoretically, it could recreate much of Operation Desert Storm in a training hangar.

The object is not to refight past air wars but to incorporate lessons from them. This also follows the tradition of Red Flag, which has drawn on the experience of Desert Storm and doubtless will do likewise with Operation Allied Force.

With the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve handling more and more of the total mission load, DMT plans also call for drawing Guard and Reserve personnel into the new environment. In fact, some individual reservists already have flown the new simulators.

For some reserve members, this could pose a problem. Most work short training schedules and have only limited time to meet their flight training requirements. Squeezing in the additional simulator time could be difficult. There may be a temptation to use the DMT time to substitute for actual flying hours, but USAF officials say many reservists already are close to the minimum number of sorties they need to stay proficient.