Sim-based JSF training to debut next year - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Sim-based JSF training to debut next year

The Navy may not receive its first F-35C Lightning II joint strike fighter until 2012, but a simulation-based training program will be ready for the first pilots who arrive at the training wing next year.

The Navy plans to begin sending pilots in early 2011 to the training squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35, is developing the training program for the first cadre of experienced pilots, who will in turn train a broader group of Navy pilots.

The F-35C community will be limited to experienced pilots — mostly those with at least 1,000 flight hours — who are coming from the F/A-18 Hornet community, for at least two years, said Joanne Puglisi, Lockheed’s director of training for the F-35. The F-35C is the carrier variant of the tri-service program.

After that, the Navy could begin to ship pilots fresh out of flight school to the F-35C training wing, Puglisi said.

“We need those high-time transition guys to make sure that the things we’re training will be validated by the young kids,” Puglisi said.

The first cadre of pilots will also fly initial aircraft with limited software systems. For example, aircraft with an air-to-ground mission package may arrive before those with the air-to-air software.

“The airplane is arriving with different blocks of software. ... A transition guy with a thousand flight hours will understand that I may only have this piece [of software],” she said.

Upon arrival at the training wing, pilots will receive laptop computers and a unique stick-and-throttle device that plugs into its USB port and allows for simulation training at home.

The first F-35 simulators arrived in April at the training wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. A full-scale simulator with a 360-degree dome will arrive later this year.

The F-35 training software will be directly tied to fleet aircraft software. That will allow the training wing to update its software soon after the aircraft systems receive major upgrades.

In the past, simulation programs were developed independently, and the training software is often several years old.

“If they make a change, we want to be able to put that in the trainer much faster, probably within months of each other,” Puglisi said.