THE
TRAINING
EXPERIMENT
The Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training
program is playing a key role in a
forward-leaning training initiative that is
launching in 2018 at Austin-Bergstrom
International Airport in Austin. Pilot
Training Next (PTN) will take 15 officers
and five enlisted airmen through a
five-month experimental course that
makes use of emerging technologies in
order to evaluate ways to create what are
being termed fighter training unit-ready
airmen.
Lt Col Jason Colborn is leading the
project as commander of Detachment
1, under the AETC Innovation Center.
‘With current and emerging technologies,
including our utilization of cognitive
analysis, we have a great opportunity to
see how the pilot learns, thereby allowing
us to train more effectively. The aspiration
is that we can take those lessons andapply them to other areas, not just
related to pilot training.’
The test aims to determine whether
the traditional methods of training
pilots can be enhanced and upgraded,
and includes five enlisted members.
Enlisted airmen who are not college
graduates were selected from a pool
of recent graduates from basic military
training at Lackland Air Force Base,
Texas. ‘If you broaden the talent pool,
then you’re still able to maintain the
high standard that we expect of people
that we need to both receive as well as
train in flying training,’ explains Colborn.
Students were scheduled to commence
training in Austin in mid-February. PTN
will, in some respects, be a reflection
of ENJJPT not just in personnel, but
also some of the materials used to
train pilots. ‘We’ll be leaning on a lot of
training regimens that are used here
at ENJJPT,’ he adds. ‘ENJJPT delivers a
slightly more advanced few weeks of
training for their [undergraduate pilot
training] students, and we’ll be leaning
on the instructors and the materials
that are used for that as we look to
build our program.’Falls. They commit to students in the
program, they commit to syllabus
changes, they commit to all the different
program management aspects that
need to be done on a strategic level
from their [ministries of defense].
‘What we saw from this past steering
committee meeting was just a big
appetite for growth. All the nations
wanted to figure out how to increase
capacity and continue to produce the
best pilots. We want to make sure that
we never sacrifice quality in our pursuit
of quantity.’
Themely is adamant that ENJJPT isn’t
just about teaching pilots how to fly
but building relationships betweens
the nations and getting young pilotsused to working in a multi-national
environment. ‘[We] know we’re not
going to fight wars by ourselves any
more. Coalition warfare is the future. The
coalition against ISIL [so-called Islamic
State, or IS] has 16 nations participating.
There are 17,000 sorties we have flown,
dropping bombs on 32,000 targets.
There is no way that the US could have
done that alone. Such an important part
of that coalition-building is right here,
right now — learning how to train, how
to integrate, how to be interoperable
in this training environment, before we
ever go off to combat together. It’s such
a critical part of coalition air power for
the future. It just becomes seamless
in combat.’It’s a great
program,
the initiative
from the local
community
connected to
ENJJPT. It makes
a whole lot of
difference for all
the nations here,
in particular for
the instructors
that are going to
stay here with
their families for
three to four years
Lt Col Lars RoeineStudent and instructor discuss
their mission as they taxi back to
the squadron.http://www.combataircraft.net // March 2018 35
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