MQ-9 Menu Trainer

Flex / Flash / Sqlite / Actionscript 3 / Flash Builder

The MQ-9 Menu Trainer was built to emulate the computer software used to operate the Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones. I worked with Subject Matter Experts(SMEs) from the Air Force to build an extremely detailed emulator for the computer screens used to operate them. The MQ9MT was designed as a training aid for students to install on their laptop computers so they could train the buttons and get familiar with the various screens without having to use valuable simulator time. Having the MQ9MT made it so the simulators could be used for more in depth missions.

It started off as just an emulator so the students could learn the menu system. It grew into much more than the menu system. The menu system was many layers deep. There are buttons that turn on and off systems. There are buttons that take you to an input screen for inputting variables. It was designed to with the detail to look exactly like the screens down to the correct fonts, number of characters per line, the colors, gradients and line thicknesses.

The first image above, displays the menu buttons labeled M0 - M9. Pressing a button results in another set of buttons another layer deep. Pressing on the gray area (the Variable Information Tables) is like pressing the back button to go back up in the menu. Entering values in the input screen and toggling buttons results text changes on other screens or in other areas.

The second image above, shows the 3D camera view from the nose camera. In this view, it shows all of the gauges and updates the weapons icons to show what weapons are loaded. It is also a 3D environment so pressing the arrow keys will rotate the camera in 3D space.

The third, fourth, and fifth images above, show some of the weapons screens for adding inventory and verifying the loadout. The detail included how many times and for how long certain lights would blink.

The application used Flex, Flash, Sqlite, and Actionscript 3 and was built in Flash Builder IDE. Some of the earlier versions used XML to import all of the variables for the information tables. There were 66 screens for information tables so there were a lot of variables. I decided that having the data in an sqlite database would be better because it would provide the ability to create hazard conditions like in the simulator.

MQ-9 Menu Trainer