Combat Mindset

To better prepare tanker and airlift student pilots for low-level flying in combat environments, two Air Force Reserve Command majors—T-1 Jayhawk instructor pilots Randy Tiedt and Doug Stouffer with the 5th Flying Training Squadron at Vance AFB, Okla.—have devised a user-friendly, flexible map software program. It allows instructors and students to program updated threat scenarios via computer rather than the old grease pencil on a laminated paper map style of mission planning. The old system “just didn’t allow for changing scenarios,” said Tiedt, adding, “Without that flexibility we had no way to mirror scenarios of the real world.”