Communication upgrade improves pilot training - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Communication upgrade improves pilot training

SAN DIEGO — Upgraded instrument pods, attached to aircraft for training missions, will allow pilots to fly further while staying in contact with headquarters without the aid of mobile ground communications stations.

The Tactical Combat Training System is a fifth-generation system that improves communication between aircraft and ground commanders.

“They can go out and they can fly wherever they choose to fly … and be able to do their training and come home,” said Philip Fisch, Cubic Defense Applications’ senior director of business development, adding that aircraft can even get post-flight feedback on the way back to base.

Cubic, along with DRS Technologies, developed the system which was installed earlier this year at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. It should be operational by year’s end at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nev. While initially being used on some the Corps’ F/A 18 Hornets, it will be embedded with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, too.

Earlier this year, aircrews with Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 121 helped test this next-gen system during training flights, said Cubic spokeswoman Jan Stevens.

The Windows-based system enables pilots in Southern California, for example, who typically train at air ranges around Yuma, Ariz., and 100 miles offshore over the Pacific, to take that training where existing ground-range support does not exist.

The older systems relied on mobile trailers that linked flight data to the permanent stations. But with the newest system, pilots use GPS satellites to continuously track, site and locate other aircraft and targets. Exercise controllers can communicate with the pilots and simulate enemy weapons or other threats.

“We have the ability to train rangeless … and [with] a long-range data link that allows us to track them, even 100 or 120 miles out,” Fisch said. When it’s compared to the 30-mile range currently available, “it’s a big, big difference. It gives them a lot of flexibility.”

San Diego-based Cubic also redesigned the system so it more closely mirrors actual flight missions. A computerized voice relays a hit or miss from a simulated weapon strike, but nearly every step, maneuver and command is exactly the same as aircrews would perform for real, Fisch said.

Other benefits of TCTS include: a media card that records flight data for easy sharing; an Individual Combat Aircrew Display System that provides better flight feedback for debriefing; a 3-D relayed view of the battle space; and an expanded network that allows participation of 100 aircraft.

In the 1970s, Cubic designed and installed the first system at Navy Fighter Weapons School, nicknamed Top Gun and based at then-Miramar Naval Air Station.

The range installations are part of a 10-year, $525 million contract Cubic received in 2003 to locate the system at 30 military ranges, including Air Force and Air National Guard ranges.