The US military has begun training with virtual fighters – they use augmented reality technologies. Former British Air Force pilot Dan Robinson told The Drive that he and his team are working on a project in California.
The developers decided to recreate the projections of Russian and Chinese fighters. The project was supported by the US Air Force and the military-industrial corporation Lockheed Martin, specializing in the aircraft industry.
Modern pilot training methods are far from perfect, Robinson said. So, for example, during training, you have to fight F-16s imitating the Russian Su-57 and Chinese J-20, which is a gross simplification of the situation. In addition, the former pilot noted that it is expensive to use real aircraft as simulators.
Robinson said that with his idea he turned to two experts in the field of virtual and augmented reality. They stated that the technology does not work outdoors and in dynamic environments, but the project ultimately succeeded. The developers started with a statistical object – they created a three-dimensional cube “hovering” in the sky of Southern California. Then, for the experiment, representatives of the Air Force Test Pilot School were invited, and the pilots were able to fly through the cube.
The next step was the creation of a model of the virtual KS-46 tanker aircraft. An air battle with a Russian fighter is being simulated. Robinson noted that the simulator will allow not only to create projections of Russian and Chinese aircraft, but also to simulate conditions when the enemy forces are in many ways superior to the US forces.
In July, the Chinese portal Global Times named the fifth-generation fighters of the American F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II, as well as the Chinese J-20, rather than the Russian Su-57. It was noted that there are several claims to the fighter developed since the early 2000s that do not allow it to be considered a full-fledged fifth generation fighter. One of them is the actual disregard for stealth technologies, which ensure low radar signature of the vehicle (for this, in particular, it is enough to compare the technological allowances of the Su-57 and F-22 Raptor, as well as the design of the propulsion nozzles).
