This Former RAF Pilot And U.S. General Are Joining Forces To Bring Augmented Reality Training To The Air Force

“Until a few weeks ago, I was in the Air Force training fighter pilots,” says General Mike Holmes, USAF (ret.), former Commander, Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. “I was responsible for about a third of our pilots trained each year. And our approach was still the same as it was in the 1950s. Now I want to help the Air Force get out of its own way.”

That’s why Holmes signed on last month as a member of the Advisory Board for Red 6, the startup that’s developing a real-time, in-flight augmented reality (AR) pilot training system. Red 6 got its start in late 2018, and has received Air Force Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 and 2 grants totaling $1.6 million, while also raising a total of $5.8 million in venture capital funding.

The company’s product is the Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System (A-TARS), a visor-based system that digitally generates virtual objects that a student pilot can see and interact with, in broad daylight and in dynamic situations. That can translate to AR training encounters with everything from a Chinese J-20 fighter jet to the refueling drogue of a KC-46 tanker.

“We set out to solve for an acutely defined pain point for the U.S. military,” said Dan Robinson, CEO of Red 6, veteran of the British Fighter Weapons School (their version of Top Gun), and the first non-American to fly the U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter. “The genesis of Red 6 was rooted in my desire to provide the quality and quantity of relevant adversary aircraft for our fighter pilots to train against. Legacy approaches to solving this problem are failing and interim solutions are expensive, not scalable and frankly not representative of the threats we may be called to go against. AR addresses all of these problems.”

During the development of the technology, Robinson quickly realized that A-TARS can add value to all stages of flight training. “How do you take kids off the street and build them into combat ready fighter pilots, ready to fly an F-22? Once you’ve taught them the basics of flying, the majority of the rest of their training is in formation. This is asset intensive. Every time a fighter pilot trains, you have to have someone to fly with them, or against them. That’s tough on finances, assets, and people. And even if you can afford it, the quality is not always there.”

Changes in current threats also pose a challenge. “For the longest time the focus has been on using air power to support ground troops in counter-insurgency warfare,” said Robinson. “But with the re-emergence of Russia, and the rise of China, things have changed. We’re faced with a near-peer adversary that we must prepare for, and it’s very difficult to simulate these threat capabilities.”

“We can simulate certain ‘Beyond Visual Range’ training that pilots need to be proficient in,” added Holmes. “But we can’t simulate visual maneuvering so we’re forced to use our own assets. When you’re flying an F-35 versus an F-35, that’s $60,000 an hour times two.”

“We knew we had to find a different way,” Robinson said. “It was back in 2009 that I got thinking about that. I met Nick Bicanic and Glenn Snyder. Snyder (now co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Red 6) had achieved a world’s first in VR by having two actual race car drivers in separate locations, race each other–a real race, against each other in virtual reality. I asked if that would be possible in an airplane, and he said yes. Then I asked if it was possible in AR, and he said no, because it doesn’t work outdoors or in a dynamic environment. So those problems are what we set out to solve.”

Not only have they now handled those challenges, but they have a functional demonstration system based in Robinson’s experimental Berkut airplane. The technology has impressed the Air Force enough that the Red 6 team was invited to Air Combat Command earlier this year, and they’re now preparing for an SBIR Phase 3 contract worth $25 million, which they expect by mid-December. The next step for the A-TARS system is to roll it out into the Air Force’s T-38 Talon jet trainers.

“The pilot training environment is the right place to start with this,” Holmes said. “We’re trying to change the old industrial training model to pilots advancing at their own rate, with actual flying along with AR. That will give us better pilots, and we’ll do it cheaper.”

The Air Force is just a start, though. “I think what we’re doing solves a national security problem, and gets us halfway to a consumer solution too,” said Robinson. “My vision ultimately is to connect all war fighters into an augmented training world–land, sea, air, space, etc. The value proposition is to have the technology to train to fight across all domains. That will make for more effective training, make it more cost-effective, and will reduce the carbon footprint as well.”

“You can imagine other scenarios,” added Holmes. “It doesn’t take more than a few minutes’ brainstorming to see other areas Dan’s technology can help with training.”

Meanwhile, both Holmes and Robinson feel good about where things stand today. “It does have that cool factor,” Holmes said. “It’s been lots of fun to watch Dan and his team. They were told it couldn’t be done, and they went and figured it out.”

“The overall landscape for the AR industry has been a frustrating one,” Robinson added. “There have been a number of high-profile failures that have focused on a non-existent consumer market with lack of compelling use cases We have found AR a home. We’re solving real problems, it’s a tremendously exciting story that can lift the whole AR industry, and we’re doing something really important for the country.”

This article has been edited to correct quotes and key technical details.