Training System

Boeing, teamed with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney to design and build the F-22 Raptor for the U.S. Air Force, is also under contract to develop and implement the overall F-22 training system. The system will be used to train F-22 pilots, as well as maintainers of the fleet.

The F-22 training system is comprised of three elements:

• Pilot Training System, or PTS
• Maintenance Training System, or MTS
• Training System Support Center, or TSSC

Training system assets include pilot and maintenance trainers (simulators), instructor-led and student-paced courseware, and electronic classrooms. The multi-media courseware and classrooms exploit the commercial-off-the-shelf leading-edge technology and methods used in the Boeing 777 training program.

The program's training system is uniquely configured to accommodate future technology and mission enhancements, including new aircraft operational flight programs, weapons and tactics additions, and courseware development and presentation tool improvements.

Pilot Training System

The Pilot Training System employs three sophisticated simulators, developed under subcontract to L3 Communications, in Arlington, Texas. They are:

• Full Mission Trainer, or FMT
• Weapons and Tactics Trainer, or WTT
• Egress Procedures Trainer, or EPT

The fixed-base FMT flight simulator has the visual realism and dynamics of the external landscape, atmospheric conditions, and mission threats and targets of a flight environment. With the additional fidelity of the cockpit controls, displays, and instrumentation, the pilots can experience the intensity of an realistic instrument flight or combat mission scenario. The FMT's external world is seen at flight maneuvering speeds and offers visibility in all directions.

In the FMT, the pilot sits in a full-scale, fully equipped cockpit set inside a partial geodesic dome with nine rear-projected facets. FMTs will be networked in groups of four co-located units at each training site. At these sites, each FMT can operate individually or with any or all of the others to conduct formation missions. FMTs, as will the F-22, incorporate video recording of cockpit and mission activities for post-flight review.

The Weapons and Tactics Trainer is a procedural trainer designed to refine airplane systems and weapon-delivery operating skills prior to training in the FMT or in an F-22. The WTT is a partial cockpit with a dynamic, forward-only, outside view, and faithfully represented mission equipment. It provides essential navigation, communication, and weapons set-up and delivery displays, panels and switches.

Pilots use the F-22 Air Force Mission Support System to prepare mission data for the FMT, the WTT and the airplane. The FMT's video equipment records cockpit instrumentation and Head-Up Display guidance cues, overlaying the outside forward field-of-view, to support off-airplane debriefing.

The Egress Procedure Trainer primarily supports pilot training on proper aircraft entry and exit under normal and emergency conditions, as well as ground and in-flight ejection.

Maintenance Training System

The Maintenance Training System will have seven full-scale, part-task trainers, built by L3 Communications and USM, in Houston, Tex. Pratt & Whitney, under seperate contract to the Air Force will provide engine trainers and engine maintenance courseware. These devices provide part-task training for the fuel system; on-aircraft structures repair; armament; landing gear and auxiliary power system; aft fuselage; cockpit and forward fuselage; seat and canopy; and engines.

The F-22's Integrated Maintenance Information System, or IMIS, the operational tool that records and networks real fleetwide maintenance information, will be fully integrated. The more complex trainers, which have onboard diagnostics like their real aircraft counterpart functions, will download to IMIS to emulate the transfer and dissemination of real aircraft maintenance data.

Trainees and operational flight-line mechanics will use the IMIS Portable Maintenance Aid, a laptop device carried between the flight-line aircraft or training mockups and transportable IMIS consoles.

Classroom Instruction

Pilot and maintenance instruction will employ multi-media computer based training, both desktop and wall-projected, to merge video and audio (digitized from analog recordings); sophisticated graphics (derived from actual F-22 engineering computer-aided design source material); digital photography; and lesson syllabi.

The courseware development uses state-of-the-art instructional system design methods, processes and tools developed for the Boeing 777 aircraft training program. On individual PC-based workstations, students will complete self-paced or instructor-led lessons and tests that incorporate interactive graphics, video, and audio.

For maintenance training, the instructor will use a console to control projected courseware material, send courseware to select student workstations and to monitor student activity.

During pilot training, students will spend time in instructor-led, multi-media, lecture-only classrooms and weapons and tactics trainer classrooms, where instructors can project training-mission information and graphically demonstrate procedures. Students will then practice on their own WTT cockpit consoles and panels before moving on to the FMTs.

Training System Support Center

The Training System Support Center incorporates the tools, methods and processes to ensure support of the training system at all locations over the life of the F-22 program. The TSSC will modify, enhance, and expand the curriculum and equipment as operational experience and new roles and missions emerge.

TSSC configuration management processes will ensure concurrency with the proper aircraft configuration and operation. The TSSC will prepare and distribute future training materials as new roles, missions, and weapons are added to the fleet.

Deployment

As part of the F-22 production contract, training devices are currently being deployed at a number of specified bases. Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Detachment 13, celebrated the opening of its maintenance training facility in November 2001.

At Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., Boeing and its subcontractors Encompass Corp. and Affiliated Engineers Inc., in September 2002 completed installation of five fully automated electronic classrooms and two labs for maintenance training that are housed in an 8,000-square foot building addition at the base. In late October, Boeing and the Air Force celebrated the opening of the maintenace training facility at Tyndall, which will be the first base set up for both pilot and maintenance training.

Also, as part of the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the program, Boeing is supporting the flight-test program at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., by developing and conducting interim training for the Combined Test Force, which includes the initial group of operational pilots and maintainers.

Additional Boeing EMD efforts include identifying operational TSSC assets, such as secure networks and courseware maintenance tools. The TSSC will retain and employ the EMD prototype pilot training devices as part of the overall tool mix to provide change analysis and implementation.