Air Force Using Serious Game Technology to Enhance Training

Col. John Thompson is the Future Learning Advisor to the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) Director of Plans, Programs, Requirements, and Assessments. He is responsible for facilitating innovation across AETC’s recruiting, training and education mission.

One of my favorite questions for the audience when I’m briefing our future learning program is, “What should be an Air Force game for recruiting?”

The US Army developed America’s Army into a great recruiting and training tool using the latest in video game technology. Often, the answer I get is a fifth generation fighter simulator, but we don’t seem to have troubles recruiting F-22 pilots.

Instead, AETC is developing a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) simulator. Not many details are releasable beyond the fact it will be based on the Predator/Reaper weapon system.

On the flight simulation side, we continue to look at what would allow us to put more training into the simulator. That might be increasing the realism by putting artificially intelligent air traffic control and traffic in the simulator.

For more complex training scenarios, it might require linking simulators together through Distributed Mission Operations (DMO). The Air Force’s DMO Center now hosts Virtual Flag exercises similar to a Red Flag exercise, but with the players all operating their mission training simulators.

In the future we need to look at efficiencies. Reuse of visual and threat databases will become a must. We must decide on the authoritative source so all weapon systems share these databases rather than recreate them.