UPT Next

[NUKE]

4 hours ago, brabus said:

How many hours are pilots/WSOs coming out of F-15E B-course with? Curious how it compares to the F-16/F-35, as those jets are both AETC vs. ACC, and as close a comparison as possible regarding breadth of mission sets.
 

Hypothesis: ACC knows fighter business better, so why is AETC sticking its hands in the fighter pie with 2 of the 6 fighter MDS. 

65-70ish hours for 2 graduates that did their F-15E MQ-BFM sortie today. 

[Pooter]

I hear you and I think that would make a great top off for a t-1 complete student.  The problem with that airline style of training for direct from T-6 studs is that they realistically have left the UPT nest to fly off-station twice. Even with great sim fidelity you can't replicate the complexity and randomness of flying in the real world. And that is exactly what the out and snack portion of t-1s accomplishes. 
 

High fidelity airline sims are for teaching already experienced aviators type-specific tasks.  They are not for teaching Stanley how not to be an asshat in class bravo airspace. Also high fidelity airline full motion sims are probably as or more expensive per hour than a t-1

[brabus]

1 hour ago, NUKE said:

65-70ish hours for 2 graduates that did their F-15E MQ-BFM sortie today. 

Welp, there’s goes the theory that ACC handles fighter training better than AETC. I should have known better. 

Edited August 25, 2020 by brabus

[jazzdude]

This partially was inspired by talking to some C-17 IP’s looking to them to do an airdrop and several of them weren’t qualified in that and avoided it like the plague. That not only pissed me off, but if you want to travel the world like an airline pilot, why not train that way? That sounded overly venomous, but I hope my point is getting across.

C-17 airdrop is an additional qual, only done at certain bases, by a small percentage of the crew force at those bases. It's also a qual that is not tracked by AFPC/our functional, so you get dumb things like sending a bunch of Airdrop ACs to teach UPT or to an airland base.

Plus, airdrop qual also meant a significant decrease in flight time (less time on the road flying trips), and a significant pay cut (the jet is a per diem machine). Throw in a risk adverse command that prosecuted an airdrop crew for manslaughter after an ADRB cleared the crew of wrongdoing following a fatal jumper mishap (ultimately found not guilty), and yeah, a lot of guys dropped that qual like a hot potato.

Almost all C-17 training is done in the sim, and we have quarterly CBTs on systems etc. The initial/recurrent qual/inst check is done in the sim, all EP training is done in the sim. Pretty much the only (airland) events that have to be done in the jet is a NVG assault landing each quarter, a tactical sortie each semi, and AR based on your training level.

So it's not a big stretch for the C-17 community to do the basic strat mission with only sim training/currency. So yeah, we train similar to the airliners already, which covers a big portion of our day to day mission.

[jazzdude]

So Devil’s advocate here but for the AMC assets out there, why isn’t there a push or an ability to do a lot of the training in a Airline caliber, full-motion, category D level simulator? Let’s be honest with ourselves here that a lot of AMC missions are flying from A to B and knowledge and application of solid IFR abilities are more important than tactical acumen. I think you send a T-6 direct guy to that style of training, then drop him in the ops units and do an MQT style thing in that units mission. Then seek additional quals  at various hour thresholds. 

This is already done in the C-17 community, and has been this way for years Almost everything can be logged in the sim, and in theory you could get by with 1 local sortie per semi to log the events that can't be logged 100% in the sim

[brwwg&b]

1 hour ago, brabus said:

Welp, there’s goes the theory that ACC handles fighter training better than AETC. I should have known better. 

Not necessarily so. I've heard of AETC trained fighter bubbas showing up to MQT these days with about 60 hours pointy nose time

[JimNtexas]

Excuse me if this has already been posted, but when I read this the thought occurred to me that if prior flying experience is helpful to new UPT students, perhaps the same concept might apply to post-UPT students as well.

“What the study found was in line with what we value already from the PCSM, in that the AFOQT scores, number of previous flight hours and any potential previous aeronautical ratings most positively relate to a successful student,” Dillenburger said.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/02/21/air-force-confirms-effectiveness-of-a-pilot-selection-tool-even-though-it-may-hinder-diversity/

[SurelySerious]

8 minutes ago, JimNtexas said:

Excuse me if this has already been posted, but when I read this the thought occurred to me that if prior flying experience is helpful to new UPT students, perhaps the same concept might apply to post-UPT students as well.

“What the study found was in line with what we value already from the PCSM, in that the AFOQT scores, number of previous flight hours and any potential previous aeronautical ratings most positively relate to a successful student,” Dillenburger said.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/02/21/air-force-confirms-effectiveness-of-a-pilot-selection-tool-even-though-it-may-hinder-diversity/

It’s almost like the thing that makes you a more experienced pilot that is better at flying tasks is...more flying. 

[BashiChuni]

4 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

It’s almost like the thing that makes you a more experienced pilot that is better at flying tasks is...more flying. 

BURN THE WITCH!!! How dare you say more sims isn’t the answer! BURN!!!

[SurelySerious]

But, a legit critique of this, “big airlines do all sim training, so that’s what we’ll have T-1s do,” is that to get to an airline you need a couple thousand hours of actual flying... I think they forgot that part or conveniently ignored it. 

[jazzdude]

There used to be the regional 250 hour wonders, but I guess they at least had 250 hours...

I'm not sure I learned all that much in T-1s. Sure, intro to multi engine considerations and EPs, TOLD, and some quasi CRM. Low levels were also good, but that's really just vfr flying, and we can teach pilotage and dead reckoning in the T-6. That was my pet peeve in the T-6 syllabus; almost no real VFR training (to/from moa with a GPS backup isn't really taxiing those skills), and from what I understand what little there was got cut further.

Is that worth a 6 month flying program and keeping up an extra airframe that's showing its age? The FTUs seem to spin up the 38 grads fine.

The flip side is that once they get to a heavy airframe, they need to *fly*. I agree there's no substitute for air time. And ACs and IPs need to teach and reinforce good habits and air sense of on the line. And schedulers shouldn't be pairing the new CP with the brand new AC...

[SurelySerious]

24 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

There used to be the regional 250 hour wonders, but I guess they at least had 250 hours...

I'm not sure I learned all that much in T-1s. Sure, intro to multi engine considerations and EPs, TOLD, and some quasi CRM. Low levels were also good, but that's really just vfr flying, and we can teach pilotage and dead reckoning in the T-6. That was my pet peeve in the T-6 syllabus; almost no real VFR training (to/from moa with a GPS backup isn't really taxiing those skills), and from what I understand what little there was got cut further.

Is that worth a 6 month flying program and keeping up an extra airframe that's showing its age? The FTUs seem to spin up the 38 grads fine.

The flip side is that once they get to a heavy airframe, they need to *fly*. I agree there's no substitute for air time. And ACs and IPs need to teach and reinforce good habits and air sense of on the line. And schedulers shouldn't be pairing the new CP with the brand new AC...

Right, but several incidents later, and the FAA upped the requirements...

 

Edit: I also think it’s difficult to look back on a phase of training and say when you learned X, Y, or Z skill that is now so fluid in your routine you don’t notice it. There are very few things where I look at a complex skill and go, that’s where the lightbulb was. So asking the experienced dudes which phase of training was important to their development may not be accurate. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by SurelySerious

[Danger41]

How long are guys sitting casual before starting UPT now? I think we should start those casuals on ground school immediately and get them some basic instructions before they start UPT and give them access to the sim building. Give them basics to develop their hands and some instruction for primacy and that way, they can start the syllabus ahead of most guys and trim time off of how long UPT takes. If the goal is truly to produce talented aviators, let the motivated ones work on it instead of some bullshit casual job. Get rid of syllabus deviation and shit like that and allow students to take care of events themselves ahead of time. Just rewrite those events to make them hours requirements and assign some IP’s to ensure they’re not going full stupid with what they’re doing. Then give them something like a checkride prior to UPT start to ensure they’re at a standard and start them on the syllabus. I honestly think with some basic instruction with this type of training you could cut out large portions of contact and local instrument sorties. 

[Clark Griswold]

1 hour ago, jazzdude said:

There used to be the regional 250 hour wonders, but I guess they at least had 250 hours...

I'm not sure I learned all that much in T-1s. Sure, intro to multi engine considerations and EPs, TOLD, and some quasi CRM. Low levels were also good, but that's really just vfr flying, and we can teach pilotage and dead reckoning in the T-6. That was my pet peeve in the T-6 syllabus; almost no real VFR training (to/from moa with a GPS backup isn't really taxiing those skills), and from what I understand what little there was got cut further.

Is that worth a 6 month flying program and keeping up an extra airframe that's showing its age? The FTUs seem to spin up the 38 grads fine.

The flip side is that once they get to a heavy airframe, they need to *fly*. I agree there's no substitute for air time. And ACs and IPs need to teach and reinforce good habits and air sense of on the line. And schedulers shouldn't be pairing the new CP with the brand new AC...

Agree with most of your points but to answer your rhetorical question - is that worth keeping up another airframe?  Yes.  

Because to address another comment you made, schedulers should not be pairing the new CP with the new AC but they do.  Someone on that dynamic duo has to be in charge and ultimately capable of handing the mission, crew and jet.  Experience built at every level in training via qualified instructors, quality equipment, enough time and a robust syllabus and standards has to be it.  There is no substitution for it. 

I realize the AF is in a crunch and things can and do change but don't forget why we had / have an advanced training program, because some training is more advanced than what the basic trainer can provide and a simulator only Phase 3 is not advanced training.  It's bullshit and they know it.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Clark Griswold

[elvis]

1 hour ago, Danger41 said:

How long are guys sitting casual before starting UPT now? I think we should start those casuals on ground school immediately and get them some basic instructions before they start UPT and give them access to the sim building. Give them basics to develop their hands and some instruction for primacy and that way, they can start the syllabus ahead of most guys and trim time off of how long UPT takes. If the goal is truly to produce talented aviators, let the motivated ones work on it instead of some bullshit casual job. Get rid of syllabus deviation and shit like that and allow students to take care of events themselves ahead of time. Just rewrite those events to make them hours requirements and assign some IP’s to ensure they’re not going full stupid with what they’re doing. Then give them something like a checkride prior to UPT start to ensure they’re at a standard and start them on the syllabus. I honestly think with some basic instruction with this type of training you could cut out large portions of contact and local instrument sorties. 

5-7 months is the average for AD guy/gals here at Laughlin. They train up some APTers to be full on crew chiefs...

[war007afa]

On 8/25/2020 at 2:00 AM, Danger41 said:

So Devil’s advocate here but for the AMC assets out there, why isn’t there a push or an ability to do a lot of the training in a Airline caliber, full-motion, category D level simulator? Let’s be honest with ourselves here that a lot of AMC missions are flying from A to B and knowledge and application of solid IFR abilities are more important than tactical acumen. I think you send a T-6 direct guy to that style of training, then drop him in the ops units and do an MQT style thing in that units mission. Then seek additional quals  at various hour thresholds. 

Been lurking a bit on this thread, but what I’ve seen over the years:

- They’ll move more training and ability to log events to sims, but will refuse to find more sims or update them as the jet evolves. 

- Sims break (some more than jets) and can create a backlog when they go down. 

- Instructors: you either get civilians (WW-nam dudes who can’t evolve with TTP efficiencies or stop telling war stories long enough to actually teach how to fly the jet) or the IP bill comes out of hide, so your already-overtaxed line flier gets kicked in the nuts with sim duties. Either way, it’s painful. In the end, this seems to be the only true desired efficiency: they can replace green suits with blue and push more guys to the line...who will then have to pick up the training slack when the eventual product hits the unit. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by war007afa

[jazzdude]

Agree with most of your points but to answer your rhetorical question - is that worth keeping up another airframe?  Yes.  

Don't get me wrong, there's value in teaching multi engine fundamentals in an advance trainer. But the budget is essentially a zero sum game: if we want to recapitalize or replace the T-1, that money is coming from somewhere, so what do we cut?

[Clark Griswold]

3 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

Don't get me wrong, there's value in teaching multi engine fundamentals in an advance trainer. But the budget is essentially a zero sum game: if we want to recapitalize or replace the T-1, that money is coming from somewhere, so what do we cut?

 

A1

[Bode]

How long are guys sitting casual before starting UPT now? I think we should start those casuals on ground school immediately and get them some basic instructions before they start UPT and give them access to the sim building. Give them basics to develop their hands and some instruction for primacy and that way, they can start the syllabus ahead of most guys and trim time off of how long UPT takes. If the goal is truly to produce talented aviators, let the motivated ones work on it instead of some bullshit casual job. Get rid of syllabus deviation and shit like that and allow students to take care of events themselves ahead of time. Just rewrite those events to make them hours requirements and assign some IP’s to ensure they’re not going full stupid with what they’re doing. Then give them something like a checkride prior to UPT start to ensure they’re at a standard and start them on the syllabus. I honestly think with some basic instruction with this type of training you could cut out large portions of contact and local instrument sorties. 

It varies drastically, there are times when APTers are waiting months and other times where we are pushing them as soon as they show up.

When I left Laughlin we were actually giving the students academics (completely optional to attend). However there are multiple problems with just letting them go nuts over in the sim building. They aren’t allowed to use the sims with 330 degrees vis because way back when a student damaged one going in there by themselves. Also, how do you keep an even playing field for competition of track and assignments? What if Bill has 3 months of flying the sim and Bob was a late rate who showed two weeks before his class? Is that “fair”?

In reality it sounds awesome. I remember going into the UTD (no visuals) and flying my entire profile when I was a student which I thought helped a ton. The students can still do and and use the IFT. However, instead of that students complain they don’t have gym time and can’t go to lunch during class.

Also, they now get a checkride while in phase 1 which I believe has helped a bit.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jazzdude]

Right, but several incidents later, and the FAA upped the requirements...
 
Edit: I also think it’s difficult to look back on a phase of training and say when you learned X, Y, or Z skill that is now so fluid in your routine you don’t notice it. There are very few things where I look at a complex skill and go, that’s where the lightbulb was. So asking the experienced dudes which phase of training was important to their development may not be accurate. 

Yeah, but the AF never met that requirement. Even with UPT before syllabus cuts, guys were graduating with less than 200 hours, and going out to fly heavy transport category aircraft. Hell, there were many ACs (and IPs) that got certed before meeting ATP mins (other time excluded since the FAA doesn't count it).

[jazzdude]

A1

I feel like we've played that game before (trading people to buy airplanes) and it didn't turn out very well.

[Clark Griswold]

1 minute ago, jazzdude said:

17 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:

A1

I feel like we've played that game before (trading people to buy airplanes) and it didn't turn out very well.

Well we cut the wrong people. 

In reality, I suspect a 5% reduction in CT flying hours in the heavy community would pay the bill, no numbers to quote to support that just a WAG.

[viper154]

5 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

Well we cut the wrong people. 

In reality, I suspect a 5% reduction in CT flying hours in the heavy community would pay the bill, no numbers to quote to support that just a WAG.

Lol-we waste so much money on bullshit. Prime example, there are still many offices that are suppose to be “teleworking” that usually provide  “support” to the force during the non China virus times. Yet somehow the people hacking the mission continue flying and deploying without them. Cut the 69 billion pointless jobs on bases we have and we would have enough money for a new fleet of Phase 2, 3 trainers and god knows what else. 
 

Don’t get me started on how much time/money we waste on whatever the social justice hot topic of the month is. 
 

let’s be honest, the Air Force long ago decided your flying ability wasn’t really that important. Who was on the party planning committee and spending time in school is what matters to the bobs. This attitude has finally trickled down to UPT. 
 

Edit for grammar. I shouldn’t post before I’ve had my coffee. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by viper154

[jazzdude]

Well we cut the wrong people. 
In reality, I suspect a 5% reduction in CT flying hours in the heavy community would pay the bill, no numbers to quote to support that just a WAG.

And replace the lost CT flying with sim credible events? :)

It'd been nice to have a cheap companion trainer, along the lines of a Cessna 172/182 or something similar, to keep building air sense as more same more stuff moves into the sim.

[Danger41]

2 hours ago, Bode said:

When I left Laughlin we were actually giving the students academics (completely optional to attend). However there are multiple problems with just letting them go nuts over in the sim building. They aren’t allowed to use the sims with 330 degrees vis because way back when a student damaged one going in there by themselves. Also, how do you keep an even playing field for competition of track and assignments? What if Bill has 3 months of flying the sim and Bob was a late rate who showed two weeks before his class? Is that “fair”?

In reality it sounds awesome. I remember going into the UTD (no visuals) and flying my entire profile when I was a student which I thought helped a ton. The students can still do and and use the IFT. However, instead of that students complain they don’t have gym time and can’t go to lunch during class.
 

I get what you’re saying, but the “fairness” argument doesn’t work for me. It wasn’t fair at all when I went through and some really good pilots in 38 classes got sent off to non-fighters and UAV’s because there weren’t any fighters in the drop. Juxtapose that with now where kids graduating 18/19 are getting fighters. That’s not “fair” either. The USAF needs to fill cockpits and motivated individuals should be able to give themselves an edge within the structure of the program. This would also empowering flight commanders to have some control of vectoring if a guy is a totally selfish prick and doesn’t do anything to help out and be a bro. 
 

On the issue of accessing the sim building, have it available 24/7 but manned normal hours. I’m sure it’ll get broken or something, but these people are military officers. We trust them with opening and closing SCIFs and accessing SAP material as Lt’s, I think using the T-6 sim is okay. And if they’re fucking around to the point of breaking the sim, boot them out of UPT. 
 

This whole topic to me is odd because so many people are convinced we are going to produce terrible aviators that will kill themselves or not be able to accomplish the mission without doing UPT the same way we did in Vietnam. In my current community (U-28), I’d gladly take a smart kid that was T-6 only trained. Main reason for that is we put them in the copilot seat and most of their mission duties aren’t flying the airplane at all. The second reason for that is we have companion PC-12 trainers where you can go practically anywhere you want VFR or IFR and develop great air sense. That companion trainer is amazing to develop young aviators and I think that would help a lot. Admittedly, the PC-12 variants we fly have identical avionics and for all intents and purposes the performance is similar so that wouldn’t work in a lot of communities. Having some T-6 or T-7 (T-38 could work but I know they’re very in the tooth) sitting on the ramp for young bucks to cruise around in and build time would be great. I’m not personally a fan of the C-172 and similar as companion trainers because they’re just so different in performance than the assigned MWS. It’s better than nothing though.