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JBSA News
NEWS | April 25, 2007

New simulators for training the warfighter

By Megan Orton 12th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs

Electronic warfare officer students at the 563rd Flying Training Squadron will soon be able to simulate a Red Flag-like exercise from seats in a classroom here, with a new simulator program called RealWorld Air Combat Environment. 

The simulator, RealWorld ACE, allows up to ten students to fly in the same battle space as they would in combat, reacting to threats and interacting with different Air Force platforms on the same screen. This ability is not unlike hooking up multiple commercial gaming systems to add players to a video game scenario. 

Typically, younger aviators have had several years of training before they get the opportunity to go to a Red Flag exercise. As the Air Force's operations tempo remains high, EWOs and other aviators are headed into combat earlier and earlier in their careers. RealWorld allows these warfighters to have more practice, earlier on. 

"RealWorld gives us a chance to expose aviators to joint and composite force operations and real-time decision-making in a non-lethal environment," said Air Force Reserve Maj. Gary DeYoung, RealWorld ACE project consultant. "That's the purpose of RealWorld, to expose them to these skill sets earlier, so they are more educated and better prepared for future combat." 

Funded as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program, RealWorld consists of three components: air, ground and maritime combat. The air combat piece is being developed at Randolph, and the goal is to eventually have these three pieces working as one simulation. 

Mr. DeYoung, a software engineer who was hired through the DARPA contract to head up the air combat piece of the puzzle, is working on the "controller" piece of RealWorld ACE. While on active duty, he created the Global Air Tactics Employment Review II, or GATER II, which has been used at Nellis, Randolph and other locations to train thousands of aviators over the last several years. 

"GATER was a constructive simulation, which means that all the airplanes are on one computer, so humans can't react much," Mr. DeYoung said. "The older model limits a user to scripting out the information and then sitting back and watching it play out." 

Mr. DeYoung started writing GATER in 1997 and eventually decided to take the program to the next level, he said. 

The simulator combines high-tech off-the-shelf gaming technology with the fidelity of classified threat parametrics, such as radar capabilities, to get the best result from both the commercial and military worlds, he said. 

When the two are combined, the ability to put a "man in the loop" becomes an option, meaning humans can interact with the scenario and react to realistic threats as they happen. 

"My role has also been to advise the people from the video game world who are good at making 3-D graphics and flight models about joint and composite force operations and how threats really work," Mr. DeYoung said. "The goal is to do that in a way that RealWorld remains flexible, so warfighters can alter it to fit the specifications they need." 

RealWorld ACE supports a wide variety of government-owned databases, such as elevation data, aeronautical charts and imagery distributed by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 

RealWorld ACE consumes these data sets to provide essential training for young aviators, including threat signal recognition training and inflight, "rangeless" electronic warfare training, Mr. DeYoung said. 

Platforms in the RealWorld simulation also have the ability to respond to voice commands, as if the EWO was giving a command to a pilot who was then responding with the aircraft. 

Aside from its high-tech features, what makes RealWorld different from traditional simulators is the business model that DARPA is using with the program. 

"With traditional vendor-owned models, you pay a lot for the initial development, and then turn around and pay more to license the product, which means you have a limited number of people using that product at a limited number of locations," Mr. DeYoung explained. "We are creating a government-owned simulation, which allows us to use the program at any base where the program would be useful." 

The advantage of creating the program within the squadron is the immediate feedback experts can gather from EWOs who have experience in the type of battle spaces the program is simulating, Mr. DeYoung said. 

Another advantage of the program, according to Mr. DeYoung, is the ability for users to customize and extend RealWorld to meet their needs. For instance, if a user wants to change the way a missile performs, an interface will allow him to alter the properties of that missile. 

"Rather than building a simulation, we're building a simulation tool kit so you can build your own simulation," Mr. DeYoung explained. "We're building an open box, not a closed one." 

The 563rd Flying Training Squadron is currently working to integrate RealWorld into its curriculum.