The U.S. Air Force’s 19th Air Force, which runs all undergraduate pilot training, is close to finishing a five-year effort to replace time- and event-based curricula with a competency-based model. Officials say the change has already shortened the syllabus for the service’s first trainer aircraft and increased the number of pilots who can pass through it, without enlarging the training fleet.
Maj. Gen. Travolis Simmons, who commands the 19th Air Force, said the goal is to train more pilots without additional resources. Under the old system, readiness was judged mainly by flight hours, simulator time and completion of sequential, scenario-driven exercises.
How competency mapping works
The new approach rests on competency mapping. According to Christy Stephens, chief of curriculum at the unit’s Flying Training Center of Excellence, the process involves gathering data from past courses and identifying the knowledge, skills and abilities trainees need to develop on each airframe. That map then informs the course syllabus.
The unit uses several software tools along with CADRE, a platform developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Stephens described it as an overarching interface that connects to the unit’s other databases, its simulators, its reporting databases and aircraft grade sheets.
To keep training quality from slipping as syllabi shrink, the mapping team combined analysis of historical data with comparisons of test groups trained either in simulators or in live aircraft. That let them identify competencies for which simulator training proved as effective as flying. Stephens said the resulting flexibility helps the unit cope with problems such as weather, so training days are not lost.
Results on the T-6A Texan II
The T-6A Texan II, the first aircraft student pilots fly, was among the first airframes mapped. By 2025, the team had identified 333 training events and more than 4,000 knowledge, skill and ability points, Simmons said. Tracking those competencies instead of total flight time or events completed allowed the unit to cut syllabus flying hours by about one-third and raise pilot throughput by roughly 20%, he said.
Simmons said day-to-day training will not change much for trainees, but courses will be more targeted and likely shorter.
Schedule and cost
A spokesperson said the 19th Air Force has spent $20 million on the effort since fiscal year 2023. The unit is headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, conducts all initial aircrew training within Air Education and Training Command and accounts for 44% of the service’s total flying hours, according to the command’s website.
As of early November, Stephens said, maps for the C-17 Globemaster III and F-35A Lightning II were complete. The KC-135 Stratotanker was 60% mapped, the F-15 Eagle about 45% and the KC-46A Pegasus 40%. Work on the C-130J Super Hercules was just starting, and mapping for the F-22 Raptor and F-16 Fighting Falcon was scheduled to begin in December.
Stephens said the project’s end date is March 2027, when all of those airframes should be fully mapped. The next step is updating course syllabi for instructors and trainees. A spokesperson said syllabus updates could continue beyond that date and have no fixed deadline.
Longer-term plans
The effort is part of a wider modernization of Air Education and Training Command. Simmons said he would like to extend competency mapping to build an individualized training signature for each aviator, carried from the start of training through retirement. Such a record could support syllabi tailored to a pilot’s common mistakes or natural strengths. That is an aspiration rather than a planned program; for now, he said, the aim is to produce better aviators faster with fewer resources.
Source: aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org
