Red Flag Referee (RedRef)

Soar Technology, in partnership with Lumir Research, will bring to bear our extensive expertise in speech-enabled synthetic entities, simulation and training technology to build a training system for international Red Flag participants. This system, called RedRef (short for ‘Red Flag referee’), wil be a voice-interactive training environment with which foreign participants can practice representative Red Flag missions while following proper flight rules and procedures. Soar Technology brings three critical and unique technologies to bear on this proposed effort. TacAir-Soar, SoarTech’s synthetic fixed-wing aircraft behavior model, will drive synthetic aircraft in the system. AutoATC, SoarTech’s automated air-traffic controller behavior model, will enforce Red Flag rules and guidelines via doctrinal speech advisories and warnings. SoarSpeak, a tool suite which provides a text-to-speech and speech-to-text services to/from our agent models, will support verbal dialog between human operators/participants and both TacAir-Soar and AutoATC agents within the trainer. RedRef will feature AFRL’s XCITE (eXpert Common Immersive Theater Environment) tool as its constructive simulation backplane. XCITE supports distributed exercises via DIS and also integrates with X-Plane, a popular flight simulator program which we can use as the pilot’s interface to the system. BENEFIT: The prototype developed as a result of this effort is specifically targeted by the customer as a tool for multinational participants of Red Flag exercises. During a funded transition effort, Soar Technology will complete development and testing of the RedRef system for deployment. While the resultant system will be GFE and free for the government to distribute stateside, we plan to distribute RedRef to international customers for a modest licensing fee. In addition, we can support both the USAF and foreigh governments through additional service contracts, where we can provide system training or extend the capabilities tool with newly developed technologies and behavior models. Because of its embedded authoring tool, the RedRef system will also have the ability to support combat flight training exercises outside of the Red Flag realm. AFRL runs several exercises each year involving combat flight training research, such as the Distributed Mission Operations (DMO) research program, which could benefit from a pre-program trainer such as RedRef. Because of its portability, RedRef can easily be distributed to Air Force bases around the country for use as combat training practice environments that students can play on their personal laptop or desktop.