Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2008 - (Page 43) a lot more people who want to fly in Navy aircraft than we can bring in. “The other thing that’s fun about it is I’m around all the young men and women coming into the Navy and the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard and they’re just phenomenal people,” he added. “They’re smart, they’re motivated, they’re patriotic, they’re physically fit. It’s a great time to be around people like that and to be able to positively impact their lives, professionally and personally. Plus I get to fly myself.” In addition to the pilots, Guadagnini’s team also trains navigators, weapons systems officers and air crew for all three branches of the service, as well as for 18 international partners, including allies in countries like France, India and Germany. About 2,500 young men and women, all under 27, come through aviation training annually, most in programs that take between two and three years. Guadagnini commands, you should pardon the expression, a literal army of 10,000 professionals working with 720 aircraft and about 100 simulators of various types. While most of those professionals are technicians and maintenance crew, having about 1,000 trainers gives the naval aviators a 4:1 ratio of instructors to students. “Our business is a personnel-intensive business,” Guadagnini said. “You can’t learn to fly an airplane without flying an airplane. It takes somebody who’s already flown an airplane to teach someone to fly. It’s an apprenticeship-type of program. We take these people in the door and they go through an apprentice program for between two and three years until they’re good enough to go out and be successful in combat on Day One.” But it’s not just technical skills on the training agenda. “We’re also training people to have that same kind of mission accomplishment, team-oriented and service to the nation mindset. That’s part of what we train as well,” Guadagnini said. “You don’t need to have everybody thinking the same way but we do need to have them thinking in similar fashion and to have the same motivations. That is part of our challenge. It’s something you model into your technical training, putting people in situations Rear Admiral Mark D. Guadagnini where they have to make decisions to get successful outcomes and also putting them in situations where teamwork will generate the successful outcomes more than that individual effort.” Not surprisingly, that level of education does not come cheaply. Guadagnini said each flier’s aviation education costs about $1.5 million on average. “It’s not taken lightly; that’s a pretty big expenditure,” Guadagnini said. “But, from the minute they hit the fleet, they are able to accomplish successfully the war-fighting mission the country needs. They are at the top of their profession once they come out of our training pipeline. So it’s a big investment in each person, but it’s a proper investment because of the expectations the country has.” Military service shares at least one thing in common with private enterprise: Those costs must be justified and performance measured in some fashion. In addition to traditional combat-performance evaluations, the Department of Defense is also moving to a new reporting system that will be able to monitor an individual’s readiness and performance from “street to fleet.” As might be expected, technology is playing a major role in naval aviation training these days, and getting more important to the process. Aside from being well-suited to the complex nature of flight instruction, simulators also are cost-effective, especially given today’s fuel prices. But there’s an even better reason. “Humans were not meant to fly, and the flying world is hazardous,” Guadagnini said. “So by putting somebody in a simulator, we are able to show them a lot of different things, especially degraded aircraft operations. We can simulate almost every emergency they might find in an aircraft, and they can do it and go through it and we can repeat it until they master the ability. Of course you don’t want to have them flying in broken airplanes. Simulations really increase our safety margins.” But ultimately, the aviator has to strap into an actual cockpit. “The challenge is getting the right mix of simulations and actual flying,” he said. “You can simulate a lot of things, but what you can’t simulate is all the motions and the pucker factor. Frankly, your butt is on the line when you’re in an airplane and in a simulator everybody knows your butt is not on the line. If you crash, you just reset and go again.” With technology changing naval aviation education as surely as it is all types of training, Guadagnini is looking ahead to deeper uses of electronic media, and perhaps to having one consistent delivery system throughout the entire training continuum. He also knows that’s a mission he’ll likely leave to his successors, as routine office rotation should have him leaving his position in about a year. As his predecessor did, Guadagnini is hoping to lay a foundation that will be built upon. “It’s an exciting time to be a naval officer because we are a nation at war. Everybody who comes through the pipeline knows that they are going to apply the skills that we give them on a real-time basis when they come out,” Guadagnini said. “They will be tested and hopefully be able to uphold the traditions of the heroes of naval aviation. It’s also an exciting time to be part of this correct application of training, the right training in the right place at the right cost.” Tim Sosbe is editor of Training Industry Quarterly ezine and general manager of webinars for Training Industry, Inc. E-mail Tim at tsosbe@trainingindustry.com. 43 © Npologuy,Dreamstime.com Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2008 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.