Debate continues over role of simulators in UAS pilot training.

• Author: Parsons, Dan

Veteran pilots transitioning to UASs can have 2,000 to 3,000 flight hours and habits learned over a decade-long flying career. Pilots brains are hard-wired to perform certain actions in high-stress scenarios and have

The Air Force now trains more unmanned aerial systems pilots than bomber and fighter pilots combined, signaling a deepening dependence on the capabilities those machines provide the military.

Unmanned aircraft are becoming just as ubiquitous in other services, with hundreds of soldiers, sailors and Marines learning to fly them each year.

But there still is no agreed upon method of training new UAS pilots--and keeping seasoned operators proficient--for future conflicts where U.S. drones will be flying in contested airspace.

Officials are puzzling out the appropriate combination of traditional flight training, imrnersive simulators and practice on operational unmanned aircraft that would constitute a standardized regimen to teach and maintain UAS pilot proficiency.

Some officials say new pilots can be trained in the virtual world alone, or nearly so. But technology will not yet allow a seamless transition to the real world, said Karl Purdy manager of new unmanned aerial systems programs for Northrop Grumman.

"The answer that most of industry will give you is ... that a simulator is the 100 percent solution" for training drone pilots, he said. "I would say it absolutely is not, at least not yet. In five years, maybe."

The Defense Department's Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap calls for an expanded reliance on simulators in the future as a cost-saving strategy and to speed up the certification of new pilots. It also emphasizes the need to iron out a formal training plan for unmanned systems operators, but paints a vague picture of how to achieve that goal.

"The current state of unmanned systems training is still very much a work in progress," it states. "As forces draw down in theater and redeploy, the services will require comprehensive continuation and joint-forces training in the peacetime environment. Failure to prepare for this eventuality will result in a loss of combat-gained experience."

In the Air Force, there are two types of potential UAS pilots in the pipeline--those who are trained manned-aircraft pilots and those learning from the outset to fly remotely piloted aircraft. to be retrained, Purdy said. They require a specialized curriculum to make the leap from cockpit to control station, he said.

"When you get into a...