How Ukrainian fighter pilots train for the F-16 with ‘Swiss’ software

The Ukrainian Air Force has launched an unusual training program to allow its military pilots to retrain on the American F-16 fighter jet as quickly as possible. And Switzerland plays a special role in this, as we will soon see.

What’s special about it?

Flight simulators are likely to be used in every modern military to train military pilots. But in this case there are several peculiarities:

Who developed the flight simulator?

The development company founded in Moscow in 1991 is called Eagle dynamics and today has its headquarters in Villars-sur-Glâne in the canton of Fribourg. A media question from Watson initially went unanswered.

The irony of history: a company director – a Russian citizen – was convicted by a US court in 2019 for obtaining F-16 manuals and having them sent to Russia. The then chief programmer of Eagle Dynamics had previously been arrested in Georgia and extradited to the US.

The English-language Ukrainian media “Kyev Post”, which investigated the case, writes:

It should be noted that these were not confidential or even secret documents. The company, now based in Switzerland, and the man assure that everything was done correctly.

What do such “test flights” look like?

The following video from the Ukrainian Armed Forces shows a fighter pilot in active service. The young man sits in front of a PC screen, wears virtual reality glasses and operates a control stick and throttle to train formation flying and various air operations in the virtual fighter jet cockpit.

The simulated aircraft is identical to the F-16 that several Western countries supply to Ukraine. Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway have now promised dozens of machines and the training of the Ukrainians must take place as quickly as possible thanks to international coordination.

Should such training be taken seriously?

Russian military bloggers appear to be mocking the Ukrainian use of the commercial flight simulator on their Telegram channels. Pilots from the American Air Force, among others, have been training with the DCS computer game for several years.

The publicly available, highly realistic air combat video game is so accurate that it is used by real military pilots for training, according to the American blog The Warzone 2021, which writes about military topics.

At the time, there were reports that a training squadron at a US Air Force base in Arizona was training with commercially available virtual reality headsets and other gaming peripherals. This is a cost-effective way “to complement traditional ground and air training programs.”

The unit had already started setting up an associated training laboratory in 2018. However, the responsible commander emphasized that VR training with software such as DCS is not a substitute for real flight training.

An American flight instructor was enthusiastic:

The software company Eagle Dynamics has continuously improved and developed its ‘Digital Combat Simulator’ and increased the authenticity of the weapon systems, not least with the help of a global community.

Of course, there are differences between commercially available flight simulator software and full-fledged F-16 simulators, not to mention actual flying, The Warzone now states. However, DCS simulators are “extremely realistic” and are great for general pilot familiarization and some procedural training.

In September, the DCS developers celebrated the 15th anniversary of their product with a big discount. It is not known whether the Ukrainians were able to benefit from this.

What does DCS have to do with the “Spirit of Kiev”?

When the Russian army invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and the criminal war of aggression sparked global horror, reports circulated about a heroic Ukrainian fighter pilot who allegedly shot down several Russian planes in a single day.

An alleged video about the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ circulated, which was clicked and shared millions of times on social media platforms, but turned out to be fake.

It was a scene from a DCS simulation. And the game developers felt compelled to make an appeal to the global community:

When will the Ukrainians master the F-16?

An Air Force lieutenant general estimated that Ukrainian pilots who have just completed basic training would need about nine months to learn to fly the F-16. However, he considers three months “absolutely realistic” for pilots with combat experience.

The Ukrainian Air Force told the Kyev Post that the duration of the training depends on the skills of the arriving pilots, the availability of aircraft and the capacity of the training facility. We assume four months for experienced pilots (in Denmark) and two years for new pilots (in Great Britain).

It remains to be seen how much time Ukraine will gain thanks to the computer game from Switzerland. And who knows, maybe the ‘Spirit of Kiev’ will come to life.

Sources