Boeing Training Systems and Services

On 12 July, Keith Hertzenberg, a colleague and friend from the distant HSA and McAir days, came back to Kingston 35 years after his first visit. Then he was a solo liaison engineer from St Louis, but now is Boeing's Vice President Training Systems and Services with 2500 people working for him at 28 locations in 7 countries. Keith took his audience, many of whom had known him in the old days, on a tour of his domain, concentrating on the UK activities. The three main activities are: Aviation Training International (ATI) teamed with Westlands, Military Flying Training Systems (MFTS), and Military Training through Distributed Simulators (MTDS) with QuinetiQ, the current manifestation of the RAE.

ATI provides training for all UK Army Apache helicopter air crew, ground crew and maintenance personnel on a 30 year contract with the MoD, and is headquartered at Sherborne in Dorset with the pilots' school at Middle Wallop. There are 125 ex-army instructors and equipment includes a Full Mission Simulator (FMS) and 3 Field Deployable Simulators (FDS).

The FMS has twin 17 ft domes with full motion, high fidelity outside world display and cockpits housing the pilot, co-pilot and gunner. The FDS has the same cockpit but in 8 ft domes without motion. The FMS and FDSs can be remotely linked so they can be 'flown' together. Also available are Multi Purpose Display (MPD) trainers with operational menus, and part task and multi-purpose maintenance trainers.

Boeing are currently in competition to be the Training System Partner for the UK MFTS. This would be a 25 year contract for industry to provide all ab-initio flying training for the RAF, the RN and the Army. The Hawk 128 will be the fast jet trainer. The competitors are Ascent (Lockheed-Martin with Vosper-Thorneycroft), Sterling (Thales with Boeing) and Vector (Bombardier with Lear Siegler).

The UK MTDS mission training programme capability concept demonstration phase has been won by Boeing with QuinetiQ and is running at RAF Waddington. The full programme phase will also go out to competition. Keith also described the USAF system which is operational world-wide with simulators at various locations in the USA and at overseas bases. However, all can be linked via satellite so that 'pilots' in, say, F-18s in the USA can fly combat with F-15s in Germany and AV-8Bs in Japan thus leading to great operating economies.

Keith's lecture was very detailed and it has been possible only to give a flavour of the fascinating systems he described. Clearly, with fewer and fewer military aircraft lasting longer and longer it makes very good business sense for aerospace companies to compete in this training arena.