Keeping America’s Top Fighter Pilots Flying High

This blog post was shared by the Modeling & Simulation Information Analysis Center.

The pilots who man and fly the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft are charged with an important task: keeping America’s top fighter pilots safe from potential enemy aircraft.  But making sure AWACS pilots can keep up with the increasingly rigorous training can be almost as daunting; especially at a time when advancing threats are constantly changing.

So, how does the Air Force Air Combat Command (ACC) handle situations like this?  By leveraging real-world experts in modeling and simulation technologies to design and develop simulated training.

Simulated training is just one of the many modeling and simulation capabilities the Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center (MSIAC) maintains.  In fact, MSIAC routinely works with organizations, including the ACC, to employ modeling and simulation technologies to solve some of DoD’s toughest challenges.  In the case of the ACC, MSIAC developed a unique combination of simulation-based training and live-fly training missions to ensure AWACS pilots remained mission ready.  Through this hybrid solution, the ACC was able to cut training costs by 50% and increase the rigor of the overall training.

So, how do our top fighter pilots manage to stay out of harm’s way? Let’s just say, they have a fully trained and highly reliable wingman running radar for them.

The Modeling and Simulation Information Analysis Center (MSIAC) is one of ten Information Analysis Centers (IACs) established by DoD and managed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC).MSIAC is the DOD Center of Excellence responsible for acquiring, archiving, analyzing, synthesizing, and disseminating scientific and technical information related to Modeling and Simulation

Interested in learning more, or working with MSIAC on an upcoming effort? MSIAC can be reached via the IAC website at http://iac.dtic.mil/.

This article was sponsored by Police Technology.