Developing a Low-Cost, Portable Virtual Environment for Aircraft Carrier Launch Officers

Abstract

The primary purpose of a United States aircraft carrier is to transport its embarked air wing in order to project combat power through the launch and recovery of various aircraft. In order to get airborne, the air wing depends upon the skills of a small number of officers responsible for the safe and rapid launch of aircraft from the carrier deck. These officers, known as “shooters”, receive initial classroom training on the systems they use then receive qualification to be launch officers through on-the-job training. Due to scheduling complexities the training to achieve qualification is disjointed and often requires trainees to go underway with different aircraft carriers to complete their training. The current approach results in burdens on the parent command, host commands, and the trainees. Of greater concern is the lack of consistency in the training of such a high risk activity. This paper describes the results of a job task analysis conducted to provide insights into the skills required to perform the duties of a launch officer. Further, the information from the job task analysis was examined and a representative finite state machine was developed and is presented. Finally, a portable, low-cost virtual environment created based on the work described above is discussed. It is proposed that the current virtual reality system used for this demonstration faithfully recreates the required attributes and scenarios to train launch officer tasks and that the prototype system, with proof of training transfer can reduce the burden on commands, trainees, and perhaps most importantly, provide consistent training.