Marine Corps aviation is not equipped to fight in the future operating environment, and the solution to the problem is not money.
The U.S. Marine Corps is the nation’s expeditionary force in readiness. Within the Corps, the Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) is the primary forward-deployed air-ground task force and, when teamed with the amphibious ready group (ARG) ships of the U.S. Navy, can transit anywhere across the globe. Unfortunately, the MEU’s aviation combat element (ACE) is not prepared to meet the demands of a sustained offshore conflict. The ACE needs a flight simulator for each type, model, and series aircraft on board the ships of the ARG to sustain aircrew readiness.
The Challenges
The duties required of aircrew are increasing. As the mission-essential tasks of each aircraft grow, aircrew must learn and maintain proficiency in a larger skill base. One of the new initiatives in the 2018 Marine Corps Aviation Plan is digital interoperability. Simply stated, this capability transmits information across platforms in all domains to disseminate situational awareness among friendly units in the battlespace.1 This is just one example of the Marine Corps putting significant time and money into developing a new capability without considering fully the human aspect of implementing the new technology.
Deployed training opportunities are limited. Units across the fleet struggle to stay current in combat-related skill sets while deployed. Weather, foreign airspace approval, surface replenishments at sea, and training range availability while transiting between operating areas all affect a unit’s ability to train. In addition, the ACE cannot conduct sustained flight operations for more than ten hours per day on board the ship because of flight deck crew safety limitations.2
There will be less time to prepare. Given sufficient time, an air-ground task force will rehearse for an operation prior to executing it to eliminate as much friction as possible. In a contested maritime domain—which the Marine Corps Operating Concept states will be the likely future operating environment3—against a peer competitor with antiaccess/area denial capabilities, however, full mission profile rehearsals will not be possible. Training locations will not be available, and time will not be a luxury the United States can plan on having. In the event of a short-fuse major operation, aircrew will not have the ability to rehearse.
Marine aviation is in a transition period. All aircraft in the Marine Corps inventory are going through upgrades.4 With this much change, maintenance challenges are inevitable. Aircraft maintenance will continue to affect aircrew readiness in the coming years.
Unmanned systems are being added to the mix. As tactics for integrating unmanned aerial systems (UASs) and manned aircraft are developed, aircrew need opportunities to rehearse new techniques. The Marine Corps Aviation Plan says new Group 5 UASs are required to communicate on a network.5 Aircrew will be challenged with integrating this capability on the tactical level at sea, in the most challenging conditions, and will need opportunities to train to ensure integration is as seamless as possible.
These challenges require Marine Corps aviation to take a new approach to aircrew training and sustainment while deployed. Simulator training platforms on board ARG ships are required to make this happen.
Maintaining Skills
As a training platform, flight simulators allow aircrew to practice scenarios they could not safely duplicate in the aircraft. Aircrew can input any desired weather condition, enemy threat, and aircraft malfunction desired throughout the sortie.6 When stateside, squadrons can maximize training by networking to other type, model, and series flight simulators to rehearse complex and integrated training scenarios. To allow these skills to degrade while deployed is accepting a high level of risk that can be mitigated by having a flight simulator on board the ARG ships.
A study by Texas A&M University professors looked at skill decay with regard to both physical and cognitive skills. Cognitive skill degradation reduces a pilot’s ability to react properly in an unfamiliar scenario. Physical motor skills have a quicker decay time than cognitive skills and require more frequent practice to be performed correctly.7
Intuitively, the increased automation in modern aircraft would seem to decrease both the complexity and level of skills required of aircrew. The reality, however, is that the use of automation—while it has safety benefits—is a skill itself and also requires practice. In fact, controlling an aircraft through automation can be categorized as an artificial task. Skill sets based on artificial tasks are susceptible to a higher rate of skill decay than natural motor skills because they are less intuitive.8
Another skill is crew resource management (CRM), integrating and maximizing all resources flight crews have available to accomplish the mission. The CRM exercised between crew members while flying the aircraft is difficult to replicate on the ground or in the ready room. Having flight simulators on board ships would allow aircrew to train in vitally important simulated scenarios when flying is not feasible.
Making Space
The primary reason current U.S. Navy ships do not carry flight simulators is because they occupy a large physical space and require support—power, network bandwidth, and specially trained maintenance personnel. Space on ARG ships is always at a premium, and every asset on board must be justified. As technology advances, however, it is possible to reduce the space required for a flight simulator capability. The Army, for example, has partnered with Rockwell Collins to develop the Transportable Black Hawk Operational System (T-BOS), a deployable flight simulator to train pilots on the H-60 helicopter. The T-BOS is a standalone capability that requires no external support and can be deployed anywhere in the world with a crew of four contracted support professionals.9
The capability to create deployable simulators exists in the aviation industry; the Marine Corps just needs to invest in the capability to adapt it to ACE aircraft. Other solutions such as desk-top simulators and virtual reality trainers also could help reduce skill decay.
Using the cockpit layout of an actual aircraft and visual cueing from a computer system is another way the footprint of a simulator could be significantly reduced for application in the shipboard environment.
Historically, the majority of aviation mishaps are a result of human error. The Marine Corps cannot allow the skills required to operate the most complex aircraft on the planet to degrade because of a lack of training availability. An expeditionary deployable flight simulator is not out of reach and must be developed. The lives of our most precious asset, our Marines and Sailors, depend on it.
1. LGEN Steven R. Rudder, USMC, “2018 Marine Aviation Plan,” 173.
2. RADM G. D. Peters, USN, “LHA/LHA NATOPS,” 15 September 2015, 2-2.
3. GEN Robert B. Neller, USMC, “The Marine Corps Operating Concept: How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century,” September 2016, 5.
4. Rudder, “2018 Marine Aviation Plan,” 18-103.
5. Ibid., 94.
6. Ibid., 188-91.
7. Arthur Winfred et al., Factors that Influence Skill Decay and Retention: A Quantitative Review and Analysis (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998), 61-62.
8. Ibid., 62-63.
9. Rockwell Collins, “Transportable Black Hawk Operations Simulator (T-BOS) data sheet,” 2017.
Captain Sanford graduated from Expeditionary Warfare School in 2018. His previous assignment was with VMM-163 .