The F-35 aircraft is so good at fusing information received via sensors that it negatively impacts the training its pilots receive, according to a pilot.
Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Gunn, a F-35A pilot, said Monday the aircraft will often ignore threats during training that the training system has set up to be a threat. Gunn said, in response, the Air Force almost has to dumb-down the aircraft to recognize threats that pilots may see on the battlefield. Gunn said in the past with federated systems, he could send out little bits and pieces and trick the pilot, trick the system into thinking he’s giving them good training.
“If I don’t have something that really looks like, smells like and acts like the threat I’m trying to find, I never get the pilots the training that I need when I go and send them out to combat,” Gunn said at an Air Force Association event on Capitol Hill.
Air Force Warfare Center Commander Maj. Gen. Glen VanHerck said a lot of the service’s most realistic training will occur in a virtual constructive environment in the “not too distant future.” These virtual environments, he said, are where the Air Force can do larger force, more realistic deployment of fifth generation aircraft and not give away capabilities. VanHerck said the Air Force, in the meantime, will continue flying to make sure its wringing out capabilities.
Gunn called the sensor training issue one of the infrastructure-related challenges the Air Force is tackling with the F-35. In addition to a limited airspace issue that he said the service has faced since the F-22, Gunn said the infrastructure network that the F-35 plugs into is like connecting to a dial-up modem in the ’80s and ’90s. During a discussion on what pilots would want in a sixth generation aircraft, Gunn said the Pentagon needs to first improve the infrastructure before getting into how fast or how far a sixth generation aircraft should fly.
The F-35 is developed by Lockheed Martin [LMT] with subcontractors BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman [NOC].