TORNADO TURNING 20TH CENTURY TRAINERS INTO A 21ST CENTURY SERVICE

摘要

The RAF Tornado GR-1 Full Mission Simulators, designed and developed in the late seventies to support cold war training objectives, were highly advanced for their time. With updates throughout the eighties and nineties they have continued to provide good service. However the advent of the twenty-first century has seen a considerable shift in the global political environment, the consequential change in the operational demands on the aircraft, a major weapon system capability upgrade and the introduction in new concepts in the funding and delivery of synthetic training in the UK. Therefore it was time to re-think and re-engineer the air crew synthetic training solution. Tornado simulators differ from many other fast jet simulators in a number of ways: 1. Crew interaction, resource management and situational awareness in a combat environment are key aspects of the training. 2. The variety and range of tactical sensors and weapon systems fitted to the aircraft is broader than many other fast jets. 3. The architecture of the aircraft avionics and sensors is an evolutionary mix of the old and the new. These factors, combined with the need to provide enhanced interaction within a geo-specific natural and tactical environment, present both significant challenges and constraints to be satisfied by the training system architecture. This paper outlines how the original Tornado GR-1 simulators were re-engineered into the Tornado GR-4 training system that is ready and able to meet both the training and logistic requirements of potentially another 30 years of training service delivery based operation. It will illustrate how both selective technology reuse and technology insertion can be blended to improve the operational utility derived from the training system.