On Target!

Written by Steve Goodman

The adrenaline is pumping. The beat of your own heart and the whump-whump! of the rotors mesh in sync in your head in grim overture, as the dance is about to begin. You are a door gunner on the MH-60 Black Hawk. Your Op: to seek and destroy insurgent vehicles after an attack upon an American convoy on an Iraqi road.

The wind swirls about your face as you dart just above the tree line. There, just up ahead below you, your pilot spots the enemy. You see the speeding vehicle and rip off your .50 cal. Tracer bullets blazing, you position the fire line on your target. The escaping truck filled with insurgents is scragged. Without missing a beat you hear your pilot’s voice calling a new target as you get ready for acquisition, your heart and the rotors still thumping in unison...

This scene did not play out in the skies over Baghdad, but rather in Binghamton, N.Y., at the headquarters of Binghamton Simulator Company (BSC). And the gunner and pilot were not seated in an actual Black Hawk, but a totally immersive, super-realistic virtual door gunner trainer. The system known as the Advanced Generation Simulator System II (AGSS II) was first shown at military trade shows in 2005, and BSC has just been awarded a contract to begin delivery of the first of its kind virtual aircraft environment trainer to the U.S. Navy.

According to BSC’s manager of military business development Greg Stanton, “The AGSS II is a high-fidelity, fully emersive air crew training device. The first device is scheduled for delivery September of 2009 to the Naval Air Station out at North Island for the U.S. Navy’s H-60 Fast Program.”

BSC’s trainer is a virtual helo for the training of UH-1, UH-60, CH-53, CH-46 or CH-47 crew chiefs and gunners. The AGSS II is made up of a pilot station, a left door gunner station and a right door gunner station. The aircraft pilot station includes simulated cyclic, collective and pedal controls. The pilot’s visual perspective is rendered to an LCD monitor, upon which complex scenarios such as convoy support operations and insertion/extraction of troops designed to sharpen target acquisition skills can be run. But the system was really developed to provide precision gunnery training to improve target engagement skills in a safe but extraordinarily realistic combat environment.

The door gunner station is composed of a scaled mock-up of the aircraft crew chief station, including the seat restraint system and an interchangeable 7.62 mm or 50 cal. machine gun mock-up. The gunner’s visual field is rendered onto a helmet display. The helmet allows a full 360- degree field of view, and the mock-ups allow the gunner to move anywhere within the station, including being able to swing out of the door secured by the belt-restraint system.

In 1997 the system’s forerunner, the AGSS, was delivered to Air Force Special Operations squadron at Kirtland AFB (58th SOF). It was the first virtual reality simulator of its class delivered to the military, and until recently it remained the only side gunner trainer in service by any of the armed forces.

The U.S. Army and Army National Guard units that fly the UH-60 Black Hawk are using a similar virtual simulator designed and manufactured by Florida-based Raydon Corp. John Yalden, program manager for Raydon said, “We have the capability of creating other aircraft such as the UH-1 or CH-46 and 47 family used by other services. Right now there are two virtual trainers in National Guard Bureau [NGB] inventory. One is located at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., and has been training warfighters for a year. The second system is in transit to Camp Murray, Wash. This system has been used at Fort Sill, Okla., and in Ohio in support of NGB training.”

In a recent Department of the Army press release, door gunner Specialist Joseph Cowan, of the 1-126th, who used the CH-47 Chinook trainer at Fort Sill, said, “It’s pretty amazing what they come up with to train us. It’s a great idea since it gives you a chance to get in there and feel what it’s really going to be like.”

The system has been designed to let the pilot and gunner communicate and cooperate with each other just as they would during an actual operation. The full motion simulator, which even uses compressed air and fans to simulate wind conditions, helps the gunner train for the difficult challenges of engaging and destroying moving targets from the air.

Texas-based Laser Shot, a company with a long history of developing firearms simulators for the military, has developed a gunnery trainer called the Helicopter Crew Gunnery Trainer (HGCT). The HGCT has yet to be fielded by the U.S. military, but is in use in the United Kingdom and Australia. Like BSC’s and Raydon trainers it can be used in the VR mode, but the HCGT also makes use of very high fidelity projection technology. Said Christopher Chambers, president of Laser Shot, “Projection, we believe, creates a more immersive environment for the gunner than VR [virtual reality]. Our expertise in firearms training and our internal research has shown that the hand/eye coordination of shooting a crew serve weapon can’t really be done effectively in a virtual reality setting. You need to get the real weapon in your hand and visuals that are exactly how they would be in a helicopter environment to experience real hand/eye coordination.”

A NEED FOR STANDARDIZATION

Manufacturers of virtual trainers agree that given the global war on terror and America’s war fighting tactics shifting to a heavier reliance on rotary wing aircraft, the need for this type of training is growing dramatically. Yet no standardization for a door gunner trainer exists. BSC’s Stanton says, “Traditionally, training for non-rated crew members has been very limited. They rely on aircraft availability; they have to rely on weather conditions; they have to rely on pilot availability and range time.” Raydon’s Yalden added, “For many years, military services have perfected and been very successful in flight simulators for their pilots. This is understandable as they are entrusted to fly multimillion-dollar aircraft. As for the rest of the crew, such as a crew chief and/or machine gun door gunners, there has never been a simulator which combines the crew portion of the flight team.”

The current field manual for Army door gunner training suggests commanders “build a helicopter cabin mock-up for training their door gunners.” That has meant anything from a simple 20-foot tower platform, to those mounted on a semi truck in a rather unsophisticated attempt to simulate aircraft movement. These virtual trainers promise to change all that, and DoD is seeing the value in such devices. Millions of dollars are spent on fuel and ammo to train gunnery skills in actual aircraft. For a fraction of that cost, virtual trainers allow master gunners to train and perfect gunnery skills on the ground. Simulation in firearms training is not a new idea. “But now,” says Yalden, “just as they perfect shooting skills with the infantry on the ground in simulators, the aerial gunnery crews can perfect their skills so when they actually do take flight, their scores are higher and more accurate than they would be without the training.”

THE EXPERIENCE

The devices allow the pilot and gunner to communicate and interact with one another just as they would in real flight. Tracer rounds help the gunner engage and destroy targets under the difficult challenge of a target and the helicopter both in motion. According to Stanton, “We’ve had over 300 active duty service men go through our demo unit, and 99 percent of those folks came out saying we thought we were in a helicopter—it’s just that close to the real thing now.” And just how does that translate to actual firing skills? According to Raydon Corp., a unit out of Fort Riley, Kan., used their virtual training simulator as a pre-gunnery tool before actual live firing gunnery tables. The scores and confidence level of the crews were 40 percent higher than if they had not done the pre-training and tackled the gunnery tables from scratch. In the final analysis, mastering the skills in a simulator and then reinforcing them during actual live fire training was very successful—much more than if they hadn’t used the trainer.

The Australian Defense Force uses a crew trainer as part of their load master course fielded by a Laser Shot affiliated company, which incorporates all of the aspects of crew chief training other than gunnery. According to Chambers prior to using the simulator, there was almost a 25 percent washout rate in the course. Since using the trainer, that number is in the single digits.

THE VALUE

Virtual trainers have proved to increase gunnery skills, but the military realizes the value of the devices go deeper than that. With a recession looming and troops currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, availability of valuable training resources are shrinking. Simulators are filling a widening gap in providing warfighters with amazingly realistic training scenarios in a low-cost, safe environment. Simulators have the added advantage of providing instant feedback, which improves training overall. Mistakes in training can be fixed; mistakes in the field cost lives.

The systems also can prove to be excellent aptitude tools. Running new recruits through the device can very quickly evaluate who is cut out to be a gunner and who is not. And the devices may one day even aid in recruitment efforts, as proven at the Army Experience Center—a $13 million video arcade was recently unveiled at the Franklin Mills Mall in Pennsylvania. Among rows of “Ghost Recon” and “Madden Football” games, the 14,500-squarefoot arcade houses three full-scale simulators: a Black Hawk, an armed HMMWV and an AH-64 Apache Longbow.

With all of their benefits, growing sophistication and fidelity, simulators are playing an ever-expanding role in training. Yet manufacturers and military experts alike agree that they are not meant to entirely replace time in actual aircraft. “Virtual training was never designed to replace real training. What virtual training does is free up the costs and time associated with trying to coordinate a range, allocate ammo, fuel and aircraft maintenance costs,” said Yalden. “We are not going to replace actual flight time. We don’t pretend to do that, but what we are doing is reducing it, so that you can make the best use of available flight time [for training].”

THE FUTURE

It is beyond a doubt that helicopter non-rated crew members play an essential role in today’s operating environment. According to a recent report presented by U.S. Army PEO STRI, Orlando, Fla., at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC), “Because of the high emphasis on mission readiness, non-rated crew members receive very little training on operational tactical tasks. As a result, senior leaders have identified gaps to provide rotary aviation crew coordination and gunnery training for Army, Navy and Marine Corps warfighters.”

“The use of helicopters in today’s warfare is increasing exponentially,” said Stanton. “The need for training is increasing as well. We renamed the AGSS II—Advanced Generation Simulator System, because it’s not just a gunnery trainer. The system teaches not only gunnery skills, but hoists operation skills. We can also train terrain flight operations and confined area landing operations—just a whole host of necessary skills for the rear air crew members.”

“When we get into aerial gunnery training, you need a creative platform because you have other tasks beside gunnery that go along with that,” says Chambers. “All the emphasis of the last 50 years has been on the front seaters in airplanes and helicopters, and rightfully so, those guys needed the highest quality simulation, but now the technology and the price point is available so that we can successfully use simulation to train crew tasks.”

Virtual simulators are making a reality of the vision that all American service personnel receive the highest level of skill training before they go into combat. ♦

Back to Top