[RYAN ROBERTSON]
LEADING THINGS OFF TODAY– WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT AN EFFORT TO ADDRESS TWO OF THE AIR FORCE’S BIGGEST OBSTACLES WHEN IT COMES TO TRAINING, AND RETAINING, THEIR PILOTS.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
THOSE OBSTACLES ARE RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS AND JUST NOT ENOUGH AVAILABLE AIRCRAFT TO MEET MINIMAL TRAINING REQUIREMENTS.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
BUT YOU KNOW WE ARE SOLUTIONS ORIENTED JOURNALISTS HERE ON THE SHOW–SO, ENTER RED 6, AND SOME POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING INNOVATIONS FOR MILITARY AVIATORS. THAT’S WHY THEY’RE THE SUBJECT OF THIS WEEK’S DEBRIEF.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
WHAT WAS ONCE VIEWED AS A SHORT-TERM PROBLEM, IS NOW A GENERATIONAL ONE.
[MAJ GEN LARRY STUTZRIEM]
The Air Force’s pilot force is too small and it’s poorly structured to be the force required to prevail in peer conflict, the Air Force has suffered a persistent pilot shortage for decades.
[HEATHER PENNEY]
If we don’t have experienced fighter pilots, we risk the outcome not just of the mission, but the entire operation, or even the war.
[LT GEN JOSEPH T. GUASTELLA]
You don’t have to listen to the Air Force here to believe or to be led to believe that we need to be bigger. Listen to the joint force. Listen to the demands of the combatant commanders that are asking for air power.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
ACCORDING TO HEATHER PENNEY, A SENIOR RESIDENT FELLOW AT THE MITCHELL INSTITUTE FOR AEROSPACE STUDIES, THE AIR FORCE HAS BEEN ROUGHLY 2,000 PILOTS SHORT OF ITS GOALS FOR MORE THAN A DECADE. ON TOP OF THAT, THEY’RE DEALING WITH OUTDATED TRAINING AIRCRAFT, POTENTIAL CUTS TO THEIR FORCE STRUCTURE, AND EXPECTED SQUADRON CLOSURES.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
ADD IT ALL UP AND IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY THE SERVICE IS FINDING IT HARD TO MAKE SURE ITS CURRENT PILOTS ARE GETTING THE TRAINING EXPERIENCE THEY NEED TO PERFORM WELL IN COMBAT.
[HEATHER PENNEY]
I commend the Air Force for all the efforts they’re making, but this is a long term problem that we’re not going to see the outcomes of for five to maybe even 10 years.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
WHILE THERE IS NO ONE CURE-ALL, THERE IS A FLORIDA-BASED COMPANY WORKING TO PROVIDE AN ANSWER TO PART OF THE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.
[UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER]
We honor our history, but we are the future. Red 6, made in America, for America.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
FOUNDED BY DANIEL ROBINSON IN 2018, RED 6 IS ON A MISSION TO REIMAGINE MILITARY FLIGHT TRAINING BY USING CUTTING-EDGE AUGMENTED REALITY AND MIXED REALITY.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
WHILE SERVING IN THE BRITISH ROYAL AIR FORCE, ROBINSON, A FORMER FIGHTER PILOT HIMSELF, CONCEIVED THE IDEA WHILE ENCOUNTERING PROBLEMS SIMILAR TO THOSE OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
We needed to train against, you know, significant numbers every day of the week, against relevant threats, and we were just failing to do
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
THAT EXPERIENCE LED HIM TO THE IDEA OF PUTTING AUGMENTED REALITY, INTO THE COCKPIT OF ACTUAL AIRCRAFT, RATHER THAN A SIMULATOR.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
So we asked ourselves, could we make simulation work outdoors, up in the sky? And that was the genesis of the idea for ATARS, the ability to create virtual, synthetic worlds, but up in the sky, such that pilots in real airplanes physically are interacting with digital content and digital environments, but outdoors, and that was the idea behind ATARS and Red 6.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
ATARS STANDS FOR ‘AIRBORNE TACTICAL AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEM’. THE BACKBONE OF RED 6’s FULLY IMMERSIVE TRAINING ENVIRONMENTS THAT ARE DRIVEN BY DATA AND POWERED BY A-I, SO PILOTS CAN TRAIN SAFELY AND EFFECTIVELY IN REALISTIC THREAT SITUATIONS; ESPECIALLY IN HIGH-SPEED SETTINGS. THEIR GOAL IS TO COMBINE THE BEST OF SIMULATION WITH REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE TO BETTER PREPARE AMERICAN PILOTS.
[UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER]
We had to have a means by which we enter these digital worlds outdoors. So the enabling technology is augmented reality. And I will draw a distinction right up front. Augmented reality is not helmet mounted queuing. Helmet mounted queuing does not do augmented reality. It is a fundamentally different technology. We’re not aiming to put ahead of display in the in the field of view of the pilot. We’re aiming to mimic human vision and put three dimensional contextual information into the field of view of the pilot and have it behave in a manner commensurate with real objects flown by real pilots.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
TO DO THAT ROBINSON SAYS RED 6 HAD TO CREATE PURPOSE DRIVEN TECHNOLOGY TO WORK IN REAL WORLD ENVIRONMENTS. THAT MEANT CREATING SOMETHING THAT WOULD WORK IN ANY WEATHER CONDITION ON ANY KIND OF FLIGHT HELMET.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
We don’t manufacture helmets. We manufacture an AR optical system that attaches to any helmet that does everything that helmet monitoring systems do, but to orders of magnitude greater, far higher standard. But it also now gives you a gateway into this digital world, if you like, a synthetic training world outdoors.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
DOING THAT MEANT RED 6 WOULD HAVE TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT TACKLED THREE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. THE ABILITY TO PRODUCE EQUIPMENT QUICKLY, THEN MAKE IT WORK ON FRONTLINE JETS, AND THEN PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER TO CREATE THE EXPERIENCE OF FIGHTING PEER THREATS.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
So the beauty of what we have is, if we have assume an intelligence base on the on the platforms, it’s simply code. You put the codes in, and then, much like any simulator you’re flying against, whatever it is you you want to fly against. So we’ve created environments that are scalable, able to train infrequently, and are absolutely relevant to the threats we face if we were going to do it for real.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
FOR DECADES THE AIR FORCE HAS USED AERIAL COMBAT EXERCISES, LIKE RED FLAG AT NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE IN NEVADA, TO GATHER FIGHTERS, BOMBERS AND REFUELERS, AND SIMULATE REAL-WORLD COMBAT SITUATIONS FOR ALL KINDS OF AIRCREWS. BUT THOSE KINDS OF EXERCISES DEMAND A LOT OF MANHOURS, LOGISTICS, AND BIG BUDGETS. IT’S SOMETHING RED 6 CAN OFFER AT A FRACTION OF THE COST.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
It gives you the ability to expand the training scenarios enormously, but you’re still doing the job for real. So when you’re in these representative threat environments, you’re still under the cognitive loads you would be for real and making the decisions in those environments
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
ONE THING RED 6 OFFERS PILOTS THAT THEY’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO FULLY REPLICATE IN TRAINING IS SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE THREATS. THINK MAVERICK, PHOENIX AND ROOSTER TRYING TO EVADE THEIR UNNAMED ADVERSARY IN ‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK.’
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
It’s the greatest risk to an airplane being shot down. Well, now we can be physically flying the airplanes, and you’d see a surface to a missile launch. You can see the boost, the sustain phase. You see the smoke trail. You can see whether it’s taking lead and lag. You get to fly the airplane against it, deploy countermeasures, physically try and defeat it with endgame maneuvers. That level of realism training will save lives, and we’ve never in our history been able to do it. So that’s the benefits of bringing simulation and connecting it to life like there are multiple examples of that, but that one, I think, is perhaps one of the most important
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
OF COURSE THE AIR FORCE, AS WELL AS THE NAVY AND MARINE CORPS, FLY A LOT OF AIRCRAFT THAT AREN’T FIGHTER JETS. RED 6 KNOWS THIS, TOO, AND BUILT OUT SIMULATIONS FOR A NUMBER OF TRAINING SCENARIOS, LIKE IN-AIR REFUELING.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
The first time you ever go Air to Air Refueling as a pilot, whatever kind of pilot is the first time you ever go is the first time you go air to air refueling. And it’s scary by day, and it’s terrifying at night. Well, now we can start to utilize this technology to expose pilots to this level of training in in multiple senarios. So by the time they go to these assets for the for the first time, it’s so intuitive because they’ve seen the picture multiple times, and they’ve seen it as they’re physically flying an airplane.
[RYAN ROBERTSON]
SO WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR RED 6? ROBINSON TELLS US THEY’RE ALREADY WORKING WITH A NUMBER OF TRAINING PLATFORMS, AND ARE MAKING INROADS BEYOND THE AIR FORCE WITHIN THE DOD, AS WELL AS BRITAIN’S MINISTRY OF DEFENSE.
[DANIEL ROBINSON]
I really believe that doesn’t just represent a brand new, really important technology. I think what we’ve actually done is create a new market, and I think this is going to change training to the point where it will be, never be the same again. Training has broken the world, throughout the world, for all allied nations, it’s really in dire straits. This is the solution to how we’ll train in the future. We’re really excited to be a part.
