Blue screens: Air Force 'Virtual Flag' makes up for lost flying hours.

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. -- Along the back wall of a dimmed warehouse-size room, four large screen displays cast a blue glow over the F-15E pilots and weapons systems officers sitting inside the jet simulator cockpits. The airmen, from Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, are preparing to target an airfield and destroy enemy bunkers as part of a full-scale campaign in the Pacific.

Their virtual battle space is teeming with activity. In the air, there are MiG-23 fighters and missiles to dodge, A-10s and other friendly forces to avoid. On the ground there are troops to support and targets to hit. The headsets they wear put them in live communications with controllers and ground forces, some of whom are sitting in the same building while others are scattered across the country in 20 other locations.

As the Air Force's budget continues to be squeezed, the service is mandating a 10 percent reduction in flying hours in an effort to save money. Some officials believe that such training can be done in simulations and honed in digital war games such as Virtual Flag, a five-day exercise held four times annually at the distributed mission operations center here in the Albuquerque desert highlands.

"You're seeing a maturing of Virtual Flag," says Lt. Col. Donald Drechsler, commander of the 705th Combat Training Squadron.

Virtual Flag began in 2000 as a series of war games called Desert Pivot, and has since grown to encompass 645 participants in this latest iteration--the largest exercise yet.

On the main floor of the distributed mission operations center, airmen sit at the controls of numerous simulators, ranging from the RC-135S reconnaissance aircraft and the E-3C Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft to an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Nearby stand two green shipping container-sized "vans" housing a control reporting cell. Inside, soldiers and members of the Puerto Rican Air National Guard keep constant watch over the air space and coordinate joint fires, ensuring that engaged targets are indeed enemies and not friendly forces. The chatter is fast-paced and wanders occasionally into Spanish.

The military services are not training jointly enough, and this exercise is giving corporals and privates the understanding of how they fit into the whole air defense picture, says Army Lt. Bryan Card, of the Patriot air defense artillery unit with the 31st Brigade at Fort Bliss, Texas.

"The things they do at their level can have tremendous effects on the battlefield," he says.

He and several other Army officers are on site for the air defense artillery fire control officer training, which aids vastly in preventing blue-on-blue engagements such as those that occurred during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when friendly aircraft were mistakenly shot down, says Maj. Brynt Query, deputy of operations for the 705th Combat Training Squadron at Kirtland.

"By bringing them into these exercises, we can work through the identification issues that still exist. We can work through the mental gymnastics here, so that when we deploy to theater with these very same folks, we don't have another blue-on-blue fratricide," he says.

Behind a closed door off the main floor where the bulk of the simulators are located, the white cell is busy. This is where all the computer-generated entities are created and pushed out into the virtual battle by airmen and contractors sitting at their computers. Sitting in two rows behind them, red cell players, who portray the enemy, launch attacks in much the same way.

There are as many as 37,067 entities generated per day in the exercise--the highest count ever registered at this facility, says Query. Entities include fighter jets as well as every single missile that is fired during play.

That high number was required to support training for the Army's 214th Fires Brigade, which participated in the war game from Fort Sill. The exercise marked the first time the Air Force's distributed mission operations was used to certify a ground force for deployment.

It also was the first time the center integrated three C-17A training units and F-16CJ simulators from Hickam Air Force Base and Mountain Home Air Force Base, respectively.

In a few months, the F-15E aviators from Seymour-Johnson who are training on site for the first time, will be able to fly in the exercise from their home station simulators.

Day one of the exercise has proven challenging. With so many electrons flowing in and out of the various systems, there are technical problems and failures.

"This is still an art--it's not a science yet," says Drechsler, who is monitoring the exercise from inside the white cell.

The data is stressing some of the systems, especially the older ones that weren't designed for war gaming.

"There's so much development going on ... it's like the early days of Windows. We still get the blue screen of death, but my guys are really good about getting you out of the blue screen of death and back up and into the exercise," he says.

Despite the technical glitches, officials and participants say the training has been useful so far.

After a break, the F-15E aviators gear up for another mission, this time chasing moving targets and doing close-air support, replicating the types of sorties pilots have been flying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The individual simulators on site are not the high-end technologies these aviators train on back home in North Carolina. But they give the airmen who fly them the ability to talk to Army personnel and joint terminal attack controllers on the ground while blowing up targets and being pursued by enemy MiG fighters.

"You're not in the highest quality sim, but you're in an immersive environment and that makes you think, 'Man, I have to get my act together,'" says Col. Leonard Moskal, commander of the 505th Distributed Warfare Group. "You can use legacy systems that aren't high fidelity, but still get valuable training."

One of the newest simulations at the center is a system constructed from an old F-16 simulator that allows a pilot to fly as a MiG-29 Fulcrum, a MiG-23 Flogger, or an SU-27 Flanker.

Pilots from the 57th Adversary Tactics Group at Nellis are flying the MiG-23 simulator and leading the red aggressors.

"Ideally, you want that thinking, living, breathing red aggressor that's really going to give you the hardest challenge possible," says Drechsler, pausing on the floor by the simulator.

Officials are looking to expand those capabilities by beefing up the center's databases with enemy, tactics and weapons specifications and by placing additional red aircraft simulators at Nellis.

The Air Force has long used simulators to train its pilots, but the shift from live to digital flying has encountered resistance. Airmen have had a tendency to balk at getting into the cockpit of a simulator when they could be flying in the skies.

"I'm not the devil incarnate. I'm not trying to take away flying hours. I'm trying to make the time you spend in the cockpit even better," says Drechsler.

As time passes, officials here have discerned a growing enthusiasm for virtual training.

"I'm not selling it anymore. I'm not going out and passing out packets of red Kool-Aid anymore," says Moskal. "People are coming in and saying, 'Hey, give me some of that red Kool-Aid. Got any grape?'"

Two commanders of the Air Force's main flying commands reportedly have welcomed the move into the virtual world, and that acceptance is filtering down the chain of command.

The B-1 Lancer bomber pilots, for example, have told officials at Kirtland that they plan to move 16 percent of their training into the virtual world.

"We're trying to help them with that," says Drechsler. It's important to remember that one simulation hour does not substitute for one flying hour, he adds. "We can better prepare the guy going into the cockpit, so that their one flying hour is used really well."

Next year, Virtual Flag will become an official training event managed by Air Combat Command, which will help legitimize requests for funding.

"You're fighting for resources in an environment where not everyone understands how good the training is," says Moskal.

The distributed mission operations center's budget is $18.5 million, which funds exercises, operations and maintenance. A typical Virtual Flag event costs $1.25 million. That includes $500,000 to $750,000 to plan and execute an exercise and an additional $600,000 to $700,000 for new development projects, such as the MiG simulator.

Flying-hour costs vary from aircraft to aircraft. An F-16, for example, costs $5,576 per hour in fiscal year 2006 dollars, says Maj. Tom Crosson, spokesman for Air Combat Command. A B-52 costs $14,288 per hour.

To fly the current exercise live would be impossible to do on the Air Force's ranges because of the scope of the scenario and the size of the area being replicated. Moskal jests that Virtual Flag is the only way to train for such a scenario, short of picking a war with a country.

"I choose option A," he says. "Option B is usually pretty expensive."

His joke rings with some truth. In March, the United States reached its four-year anniversary of the war in Iraq and the bill is pushing $450 billion.

By conducting training virtually, the Air Force expects to save money. This single Virtual Flag exercise is saving the force $29.4 million in flying hour costs alone, says Capt. Mike Davis, chief requirements engineer for the 705th Combat Training Squadron.

The service also is trying to reduce costs by minimizing the travel time required for participation in Virtual Flag. Moving simulators out of the center to home stations will allow more crews to train without leaving their bases.

The goal is to have 90 percent of Virtual Flag participants training from home stations in about three to four years, says Moskal. Right now, the split is about 80 percent home station, 20 percent at the center.

"All I need here is a common environment, the white force, ground models, plus a scenario," he says, in addition to "Maytag"--a group of engineers that monitors and troubleshoots the networks that keep all the electrons flowing during an exercise.

The ultimate goal, leaders say, is to be able to do a rapid mission rehearsal. If the call comes in for a strike, they want to be able to run the mission virtually, then fly the real thing the next day.

But that vision is still a long way off.

"This is still an integration nightmare," says Moskal. One of the challenges is the database limitations and variations that are built into training systems. They are all different, says Query.

For example, an A-10 simulator can "fly" within a certain area, but that database may only overlap a small portion of an F-15 or F16 trainer's database.

"You have to try to find the postage stamp that they do overlap on," says Query.

Standardizing those databases is a complex problem, he adds. "Everyone says why can't you just get Google Earth? It sounds so easy, and yet it's not."

Another issue is that often simulators lack the capacity to process massive amounts of data, says Query. For example, an F-16 might be able to see 50 entities, and of those, 25 might be entities in the sky, and 25 might be on the ground. If more than 25 entities are put into the either environment, then the operators may not have a realistic air picture inside the simulator.

"It doesn't have to be cutting-edge with way-cool graphics to practice the thinking piece that we're doing here. But it does have to have some sort of capability to accept the environment around it," says Query: "I think if we solve the environment challenge and the standards challenge, we'll be getting a lot further along."

As the training squadron moves ahead with its plans to bring on board more simulations into its exercises, the Air Force is still short of machines that speak similar languages, interact with one another and have compatible map databases.

Whether to buy low-end simulations to fill the gap, or buy fancier systems is a constant dilemma for Moskal, who says his focus has been on the integration of current technologies.

At the same time, he must focus on creating the environment in which Virtual Flag participants play. That is becoming more complex as the Air Force moves into cyber warfare.

Because cyber warrior teams operate at a higher security level than the center typically does, they have had limited play in this Virtual Flag. Engineers were able to replicate national assets' communication detection capabilities, says Query.

Cyber operations, however, will have a big role in the next Virtual Flag exercise in July, says Drechsler. He intends to have cyber operations teams tied in and playing from their home stations.

"In some cases, the only place you can ever train cyber operations is within the distributed mission operations environment. You can't necessarily train it out there in the real world--people will get a little upset," he says.

In preparation, engineers are working on security protocols, to be able to pass out data to all the training systems on the secret level and strip out anything that is classified at a higher level.

The handling of sensitive information also will be an issue with the arrival of F-22 Raptor simulators into the center this summer. The advanced fighter jet operates at a higher security level, so the simulation will be sealed in its own space off the main floor.

Together, those efforts will help officials link in the B-2 stealth bomber simulators, which operate at the top-secret level.

"We want lieutenants and captains to see exactly what they're going to see in combat, and then share things across the network that can be shared," says Drechsler. "We don't want to dumb it down because we want our aviators to get high-fidelity training."

Other goals include bridging virtual and live training facilities, says Query. But there are safety issues to contend with first. Officials say they would like to incorporate more coalition players into their exercises, but filtering out classified government information is still a challenge.

"You have to make sure you have the technical and policy solutions in place to make it work," says Drechsler.

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