Air Force Seeks Industry Proposals to Update Pilot Training Program

The U.S. Air Force has asked industry to suggest specific adaptations of commercial off-the-shelf systems for the second round of the service’s training program for pilots, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

The Air Force’s AFWERX innovation hub seeks prototypes or fielded technologies in data science, artificial intelligence, biometrics, simulator development, virtual reality and adult education to help pilots under the Pilot Training Next initiative to track their progress.

Johnathan Wiley Bucey, trainer for Pilot Training Next, said the next phase of the program aims to further collect and analyze biometric data to develop a debriefing tool and individually assess the performance of students.

“We are trying to drive toward that individualized learning atmosphere as opposed to traditional undergraduate pilot training, which is a written syllabus and every single student is going to follow the exact same lesson plan from beginning to end,” he said.

Interested vendors have until Oct. 5 to submit proposals for the effort, which has a budget of $500K for prototypes and experimentation.

The Air Force expects to resume the pilot training program in January.