UAV Training and Simulation- A Growing Need

Written by admin on Wednesday, June 19th, 2013

With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) being developed worldwide and an ever increasing demand signal, a need for improved UAV training and simulation is slowly being met by industry. With all branches of the U.S. Military becoming intrinsically tied to UAVs, finding solutions in the training of UAVs is quickly becoming a high priority.

UAVs came of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the U.S. military hasn’t looked back. With the initial deployments of the Predator and the Shadow, the thirst for ISR and the services provided by UAVs have only grown. With the growth of UAVs came the requirement to train operators in both flying the UAVs but also in sensor management and navigation. Each branch of the military does their training differently but the need for quality training and simulation is constant across all branches.

Currently the military uses 10% of their UAV training flights in the simulators, while both fourth and fifth generation fighter aircraft use 30-40% of their flights in simulators. Given the lack of “seat of the pants” buy antibiotics taiwan requirement for UAVs, you would think that a larger percentage of training could be conducted in simulators. Other than takeoff and landings, UAVs are largely autonomous and are provided steer points or racetrack patterns to provide ISR capability. With UAV operators using computer based ground stations to conduct missions, you would think that training would be very easy to simulate and much more cost efficient than using high valued assets for training. But what is often overlooked is the fidelity of the trainers and the systems in place to provide the adequate level of immersion into “mission” areas to be considered acceptable for training.

The growth of UAVs in the military is truly remarkable and certainly a necessity but having the UAV training and simulation in place and of sufficient quality cannot be overstated. The future will need to rely upon a greater percentage of training being conducted in simulators as a large cost saver but doing so can only be done if the training devices are effective and suitable.

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