Stewart Penney/RAF BENSON
With the opening of the Medium Support Helicopter Aircrew Training Facility (MSHATF) this year, UK Royal Air Force helicopter crews, for the first time, have easy access to flight simulators that represent military helicopters rather than their commercial equivalents. As well as improving initial and continuation training, MSHATF gives the opportunity to increase operational simulator-based training using tools such as forward-looking infrared, in-flight refuelling and defensive aids systems.
MSHATF is owned and managed by a commercial team led by CAE Aircrew Training Services (ATS). The Charterhouse investment bank, SERCO and VEGA are also in the group. SERCO provides facility management while instructors at VEGA supply computer-based training aids.
The facility at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, UK, has three Boeing Chinook HC2/3 simulators, one for the Westland Puma HC1 and another for the EH Industries Merlin HC3 - all built by CAE - with another unit due to be delivered towards the year-end.
The centre is one of three privately financed simulator facilities used by the RAF. The others, at RAF Valley in Wales and RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, cover BAE Systems Hawk and Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules training, respectively. The helicopter facility is valued at £100 million ($160 million) and CAE ATS has a 40-year contract, valued at £275 million for the first 20 years.
Before the MSHATF became operational, RAF support helicopter crews relied on commercial simulators for conversion and continuation training, limiting the scope for operational training. Gp Capt Nigel Brewerton, RAF Benson station commander, acknowledges that the previous system was not ideal for pilots converting to a new type as simulator time was provided in a block. Now it can be interspersed with ground school - also at MSHATF - and flying the machine for real. In future, pilots are expected to triple the number of simulator hours and halve flying hours during basic type training.
New to RAF support helicopter crews, however, is the ability to practise operational missions in the simulators, either as singleton crews or in aircraft packages. Such training could include the GKN Westland Apache attack helicopter that is entering UK Army Air Corps service, as one of three deployable Apache simulators can be "plugged into" MSHATF, says CAE ATS managing director Brian Symes.
Brewerton says MSHATF will require a culture change within the RAF, which has traditionally practised missions in the air. Pilots, he says, need to understand training objectives and benefits and not just see simulators as cutting flying hours.
MSHATF's simulators allow training at day or night, in Arctic, temperate, jungle or desert environments. Key to operational training is the tactical control centre (TCC), says Brewerton. Without it, MSHATF would "just be six simulators," he says. With TCC comes the opportunity to develop support helicopter force doctrine and operational capabilities and to play war games, with input from senior members of the Joint Helicopter Command and with 16 Air Assault Brigade - the British Army unit most likely to be involved in operations with the support helicopters. Wargaming allows "what-if?" questions to be asked during mission rehearsal. Other army units could be deployed on-site to direct and control the helicopter force as it would do in the field.
The TCC has a rapid database generation facility that allows the creation of new visual "scenes" for the simulator within 48h. This allows crews to train in the area where they will conduct a mission with realistic environmental conditions - such as hot and high - and threats simulated depending on the quality and quantity of available data. This could make the difference between success and failure in a mission.
Gordon Wooley, TCC manager, says the centre is at the heart of MSHATF, linking the simulators and creating, and controlling, the environments, friendly forces and threats in the helicopter's synthetic world. TCC can input naval forces, surface-to-air missiles, fast jets, underslung loads and weather patterns into the virtual world.
Operators at three consoles in the TCC can also monitor rules of engagement and safety aspects, such as crew resource management and pilot overload. Session recording allows a thorough debrief and a review of any "what ifs?" evaluated during the sortie. TCC can generate up to 500 players and platforms.
Brewerton says MSHATF's growth potential is significant, particularly in the tactical area, and predicts its use will increase as RAF culture changes, improving operational capability.
Source: Flight International
