Developments in the technologies and its mind-blowing applications enthrall the industries to bring out the best innovation and to progress ahead with their benefits. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality has been in headlines for the past few years. U.S Air Force has shifted its interests towards Virtual and Augmented Reality and made an exciting announcement.
There has been a paradigm shift among the Military forces to tweak their training solutions with the help of Augmented and Virtual Reality. U.S Air Force has come with an idea of training its pilots on the Virtual Reality platform. It has designed a platform worth 38 million US dollars for its Air Force Pilots to nurture them on advanced tactics to face combat against peer nations. The announcement was made in August and inaugurated its new “Virtual Test and Training Centre (VTTC)”. The training will be focused on a series of aircrafts such as F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, F-15E Strike Eagle, and F-35 Lightning II. The training center is housed at Nellis Air Force Base(AFB) and will serve as the place for joint-aerial combat training in the future.
The novel VR program VTTC by U.S Air Force has introduced the “Virtual Reality Procedures Trainer (VRPT) in the month of July. They are specially designed to provide potential combat training for student pilots. There has been an outstanding advantage over the traditional way of training. VRPT mainly focuses on reducing human bias in giving instructions, creating a better platform to enhance the training for students, provide immediate feedback to mitigate the errors and poor habits at the earlier stage itself.
The aim is to promote aircraft familiarization with better assistance. VR and AR are the best when looking for such benefits. Ultimately technology won’t replace the manpower completely and won’t be an intelligent move. Manpower is required but at the same time trying to provide the best training with the available resources.
The prevailing pandemic has its own contribution to shifting training towards VR technology. Air Force officials stated that the pandemic has slowed down the production of new Pilots and they have adopted this new VR technology to tackle the situation wisely. This new training mode has brought down the traditional military flight training cost to around $40,000/hour and it is less risky as well.
