XBradTC

Remember this video from a couple years ago?

Here’s a half hour documentary about the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, home to the famous TOPGUN course for fighter crews.

The video is apparently about a decade old, with the SuperHornet just coming in, and the F-14 just heading out.

Unlike the 1986 movie, at the real TOPGUN, much of the focus is on the brief and the debrief. One of the key tools used in debriefing the students after a hop is TACTS. The Tactical Air Combat Training System allows TOPGUN to show an engagement in its entirety, either on a gross scale, or down to very fine detail. The positions, heading, altitude, speed and other information on every participant in a fight is shown.

As a student is flying a mission, they’re trying to accomplish the goals for that mission. When they return to be debriefed, they’ll very often forget key incidents, misremember the timing of others, or just never notice something critical that occurred during the mission. They simply didn’t see the gorilla.

But with TACTS, they have to face the harsh truth. And that makes learning easier.

The National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA has a similar approach, though for Army ground troops. Each vehicle has equipment to report its location, while the entire battlefield is under video surveillance, and radio transmissions are recorded for future reference during the debrief (which we Army types call an AAR, or After Action Review).

Key questions in an AAR are typically, what were you supposed to do, and what did you actually do? Many times, people are surprised to learn how poorly they understand the first question, and even more surprised to learn they don’t really remember rightly what they did. That’s why tools that can help accurately recreate the battle are so powerful as teaching aids.