Mixed Reality Flight Sims Are Accelerating F-16 Pilot Training in Ukraine

Flight simulator company Dogfight Boss, and Varjo, the high-end XR headset creator, announced they’ve shipped their first mixed reality F-16 simulator to the Ukrainian Air Force to help accelerate pilot training. And there’s likely more to come, as the country inevitably looks to scale training to keep pace with the influx of the American-built fighter jets.

Last month Ukraine began receiving its first F-16s from NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands, which are meant to replace its aging Soviet-era MiG and Sukhoi jets. Belgium and Norway have also signed on to provide Ukraine with over 60 of the fighter jets.

A handful of Ukrainian pilots began training to fly F-16s in Arizona late last year, however Ukrainian officials have expressed frustration they simply can’t train enough, as F-16 training programs in the US and across Europe have limited seats.

Now Dogfight Boss and Varjo have partnered to deliver a MR headset-equipped F-16 C Viper simulator to an unspecified Ukrainian Fighter Pilot Base in Kyiv, which will allow pilots to fly virtual missions while seeing a passthrough of their instrument cluster, allowing for a more realistic training experience.

Although such a platform doesn’t address the training crunch at hand, it will allow pilots to train and maintain skills in-country, which has been an active war zone since the Russian invasion began in February 2022.

Dogfight Boss maintains in a LinkedIn post that the reception to the MR simulator has been promising thus far, noting there is an “urgent need for additional units to support cooperative training scenarios.” This could see at least eight more simulators shipped to the Ukrainian military, the company says.

“After nearly a year of detailed fine-tuning and extensive testing with the help of EU F-16 pilot instructors, we are honored to deliver Ukraine’s first fully functional F-16 simulator,” Dogfight Boss CEO and founder Lukas Homola says. “This simulator is a testament to our commitment to precision and excellence, which is being developed and produced in-house. From construction to electronics, every component, including the complete instrument panels, throttle quadrant, pedals, and force-sensing stick base, has been crafted to meet the highest standards.”

Both the Finland-based Varjo and Czechia-based Dogfight Boss have worked extensively with defense customers over the years, with Varjo’s XR headset currently used by 60 such entities, including the U.S. Army Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer (RVCT) program which uses Varjo for portable training for the Apache, Chinook, and Blackhawk helicopters.