U.S. Army Initial Entry Rotary-Wing Transfer of Training Research

Early fixed-wing research demonstrated that potential cost and training benefits could be derived from simulation-augmented primary flight training. More recent research in this area has been the exception, not the rule. This is especially true for rotary-wing aircrew training research. Currently, the U.S. Army does not use simulation in the primary (contact) phase of initial entry rotary-wing (IERW) training. Research performed by the Army Research Institute showed that a combination of synthetic flight simulation and criterion-based training during the primary phase of IERW had the potential for saving training time and costs in the aircraft. This research was performed using a low-cost simulator based upon the UH-1 helicopter. In the 4 quasi-experiments reported, positive transfer effectiveness ratios (TERs) were observed for most flight maneuvers pretrained in the simulator; student pilots in the simulator group required fewer iterations than control participants to reach proficiency on most flight maneuvers in the UH-1 training aircraft. As the visual display and flight modeling systems were upgraded, greater TERs were observed, and differences among groups tended to become significant.