Evaluating the Impacts of Mission Training via Distributed Simulation on Live Exercise Performance: Results from the US/UK 'Red Skies' Study

摘要

Over the past several years, the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have been involved in research to develop training and assessment methods for use in mission training via distributed simulation. As part of these efforts, we developed competency-based training and rehearsal scenarios and data collection instrumentation for routinely delivering and assessing distributed training events. The most recent collaborative study, named 'Red Skies' involved extending our work to include field assessments of the training benefits derived from involvement in a simulation-based distributed mission training event and subsequent live flying at a Coalition Red Flag exercise event at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada in the US. This event was the largest Red Flag event ever hosted, and presented a number challenges for the study and for data collection. This paper presented the methods and results from the distributed simulation preparation, which involved connecting simulators in Bedford UK with those of the Warfighter Readiness Research Division of the AFRL, located in Mesa, Arizona. It also presents results from the subsequent live fly and evaluation in the Coalition Red Flag exercise, which included demonstrating our first and successful attempt to follow coalition pilots from a Distributed Mission Operations (DMO) training event to the Red Flag exercise and to collect data while the live fly event was underway. Outcome data is presented and discussed. We close with a discussion of the implications of our work to date as a way forward for future training events and how the methods and process developed for Red Skies can allow us to quantify and demonstrate training benefits from distributed simulation training for live Operations;.