Not your father's C-130: training for war: a multimedia experience.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Air Training

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LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark.--Airmen who come here to learn how to fly C-130s may one day receive iPod touch devices with interactive software designed to acquaint them with the aircraft as they progress through their studies.

Just as training technologies for the newest fighter jets are going digital, so are those for one of the Air Force's oldest airplanes, the C130 Hercules.

The use of iPods would mark a dramatic shift in the way the Air Force has traditionally prepared combat airlift crews for service. By incorporating more multimedia into training, it is addressing the needs of young airmen who learn differently than past generations.

"They're not going to pull out a stack of books and go through them with a highlighter. That's just not the way it's done with them," says Col. C.K. Hyde, commander of the 314th Airlift Wing, which trains all C-130 operators from the U.S. military, along with crews from 34 allied nations. The wing graduates about 1,800 air-lifters a year and accommodates an average of 400 students daily.

In part because of fiscal and operational constraints--including fuel costs, budget shortfalls and a deficit of aircraft as a result of the wars and aging--the service is mandating that training hours be moved off of the flight line and into simulations and other computer-based trainers. The initiative, known as reduced flying for initial qualification, or RFIQ, is resulting in an annual savings of 3,600 flight hours and $17.1 million here at the C-130 Center of Excellence.

"This RFIQ initiative has changed the way we do training," says Shane Evans, senior program manager of the C-130E training at Lockheed Martin Corp., which holds the contract for training airlift pilots, navigators, flight engineers and loadmasters.

Wing Commander Hyde, whose grandfather helped to build C130 aircraft on the assembly line in Marietta, Ga., points out that the wing is still flying some of those early planes today. "They don't have a lot of flying hours left in them, so we're maximizing those flying hours on what's really important that we need to be doing in the aircraft, and doing everything else in the sim and in the device trainers," he says.

Under the initiative, the amount of simulation time required for student pilots has increased to 149 hours from 101 hours, while the amount of time flying actual aircraft has decreased to 23 hours from 32 hours. For flight engineers in training, the...