Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/235053
Training T Q Explain the Operational Training Support Program. This has been credited by some for setting a new standard for training. We work with the air force to understand the training requirement, what knowledge, skills and abilities need to be developed in the air crew and the maintainers, and then design an integrated solution. Everything is on the table when we do that, which is an emerging trend. We have classroom-based training with an instructor; computer-based training where you learn all the knobs, switches, dials and task flows; part-task trainers where you sit in a device, maybe a representation of the aircraft cockpit, and learn a task; then stationary full mission trainers; and then full motion trainers that can all be networked to conduct a scenario-based mission rehearsal. You have the entire training solution and all the courseware and you are able to optimize what skills you are developing under which media so that you can get the most costeffective, highest quality training. It is a great opportunity for us – we get to use all of our skills. As you move up that scale from classroom to full motion simulator and eventually live exercises, it typically becomes more expensive. So we are always motivated to drive the training experience down the fidelity curve so that we can develop the required level of skill at the lowest affordable level of media fidelity. But you can only really do that if you are tasked to develop the complete, integrated training solution. Militaries are also starting to pay closer attention in this fiscal climate to what they call point of need: delivering training to the student at their point of need. It is always most expensive to fly somebody somewhere, put them in a live aircraft and have them fly around. If they can start their training through exposure in a classroom close to where they live and work, then access course modules through a defence wide area network on an assigned laptop, it becomes more personal, flexible and affordable. At the high end, with full mission, full motion simulation environments that we can network together, we end up with tactical control centres through which we can introduce distributed mission training. That allows the air force from a multi-aircraft or squadron or formation level to conduct higher order training experiences or conduct mission rehearsal that they couldn't otherwise simulate in live aircraft. We can create the synthetic environment for troublesome situations or challenging battlefield scenarios that you could not replicate with live aircraft. That allows us to do distributed mission training and rehearsal prior to deployment. In some countries where we operate these types of centres, they will have regular simulated wars to keep the crews at the highest level of mission readiness or we will simulate the place where they are about to be deployed to prepare them for that environment. Q How significant a change is this from the traditional approach? Traditionally, militaries have been more the training system integrator. They would do their training needs analysis, decide how much they wanted done in a classroom, on computers, in simulators, and then they would run a contract for each of those and manage all of those contractor relationships. Many now realize www.vanguardcanada.com DeceMBeR 2013/JANUARY 2014 33