F-35 pilots at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada will begin training in the U.S. Air Force’s most hyper-realistic battlespace simulator ever this year—when the Joint Simulation Environment reaches initial operational capability at the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis (JITTC-N). But Nellis and the F-35 are just phase one of the Air Force’s revolutionary training technology, which will dramatically change the way warfighters prepare for combat.
Experts from HII’s Mission Technologies division—a key contractor in the software development, integration and support of the JSE—say that the DOD appears to be “all in” on JSE, with $2.5 billion allocated toward its stand-up at Nellis and expansion to other installations in Fiscal Year 2025.
Looking ahead, JSE facilities like the one at the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis will be established at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, among other locations. But it’s not only U.S. Air Force bases waiting in line: The technology is designed to be utilized at F-35 bases between the Air Force, Navy, and international allies.
“[JSE] sets the benchmark. This is a totally new approach,” said Mike Aldinger, vice president of business development in Mission Technologies’ Global Security group, which includes live, virtual, constructive training capabilities. “It’s revolutionizing how they train. I think it’s going to take some years to get to a steady state as we start to bring in the other participants, including other services. As an example, the Space Force in the past year has become more ingrained in the Air Force-Navy focused effort to work together [on JSE]. They’re aligned and focused on the strategic objective.”
Aldinger says U.S. Air Forces in Europe and coalition partners like Australia and the United Kingdom are high on the priority list for receiving JSE access and training solutions. He mentions the Royal Australian Air Force’s interest in particular.
John Bell, Mission Technologies’ chief technology officer, says that 10 years from now, HII wants the JSE to let warfighters train not only “like they fight” but also “where they fight.”
“That may be a Sailor on board a ship,” he said. “That may be an Airman who is home stationed near a series of virtual simulators or maybe forward deployed at an air base. We’d like all of them to be able to join in a distributed network of systems in which the JSE is taking part.”
JSE facilities consist of both hardware (glass cockpits and domed simulators with 4K projectors) and software that mimics actual aircraft software, which together form a near-exact virtual battlespace for tactical pilots to train in. Aldinger calls it a “fighter in a box.”
When JITTC-N goes live with JSE this year, the F-35 will be the initial fighter platform. But Bell says the physical cockpit will be made up of modular components, allowing for other platforms like the F-22, E-7, and even Collaborative Combat Aircraft to have their own fighter in a box within several years.
“The whole concept of unmanned wingmen and autonomy is huge, and that’ll be a new component within JSE,” Bell said. “This is a really exciting opportunity for us to see the same simulation system used throughout the lifecycle of a new weapon system like the CCA. We’ll be able to use the same simulation to do design and requirements testing, and then to validate the system after it’s delivered like we did for the F-35 test and evaluation.”
But Bell stresses that while the physical components of the JSE are an impressive simulation of real aircraft, it’s the environment that really sets the technology apart from existing training systems. JSE’s high-fidelity environment—which in its first iteration will allow up to eight warfighters to simultaneously train in the same virtual battlespace under the same conditions—is laser-focused on team and joint training.
“Repeated takeoff and landing, learning the muscle memory for pushing buttons, and controlling the aircraft—that is usually training that’s done for an individual pilot in an individual cockpit simulator with many reps and sets,” Bell said. “What JSE is really for is that graduate-level exercise: ‘OK, now we know how to fly the aircraft. How do we work as a team? How do we use the advanced tactics that we’re learning about in the classroom, where we have to share information between the aircraft and have a greater shared understanding of the operational environment? How do we learn how to work together in that very complex environment?’ That’s what JSE is really all about.”