MS&T Magazine - Issue 5/2009

www.halldale.com The International Defence Training Journal

Training Transformation

UAS Aircrew Training Evolutions Training Technology

The Future of Simulation & Training National Focus

Rotary Wing Tour de France Training Technology

The Little Game Engine That Can

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Issue 5/2009

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Chris Lehman

Informed or Just Overwhelmed?

In the current Information Age, it is widely held that unprecedented access to information, data, and news at anytime - and anywhere - makes 21st century citizens the most “informed” generation in all of human history. Some believe that access to this unlimited 24/7 “fire hose” of information provides citizenry with the tools needed to effectively participate in national and international dialogs, using the multi-dimensional thinking that these volumes of information supposedly enable.

Observers of the geo-political discourse in western nations might take exception to this conclusion. They might ask why so many popular fictions remain core beliefs of so many citizens. They might ask why so many Americans believe that President Obama is not a US citizen and that he adheres to the Muslim faith. Or why a majority of Americans still cling to the belief that several of the 9/11 airline hijackers entered the US through Canada. Examples from the rest of the world are just as stark; many Europeans believe that crime levels are so high in all US cities that virtually the whole population carries a personal weapon, night and day. And more importantly, many citizens of the western democracies do not believe or understand the nature of the current terrorist threat, or the tools needed to actually defeat it. We can see the latter example in those western nations engaged in combat and security operations in Afghanistan; democratically elected governments in each of these nations must spend enormous political capital to maintain combat forces in that unhappy country.

These examples illustrate that while massive amounts of information can provide an opportunity to broaden thoughts and viewpoints, it can also overwhelm people who are already constrained by time in their daily life. The result is that they actively filter all received information in accordance with their own personal values and biases. You listen to the media outlets and read newspapers that reflect your viewpoints, never thinking to listen to or read opposing views. As a result, on just about every major issue, the players are deeply polarized, with decent human discourse virtually impossible due to the vitriol. Everyone is shouting and no one wants to listen.

Dennis Murphy of the Center for Strategic Leadership at the US Army War College wrote in a recent Op-Ed: “We need to change this, and it needs to begin with our children who are watching it evolve.” He quotes Karl Fisch, a Colorado high school teacher who noted: “The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004, we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist...using technologies that haven’t been invented yet...in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” What this means is that we need to put the focus on teaching our kids “how” to think, not necessarily “what” to think. And getting at “how” to think can help us deal with the information overload.

The Op-Ed raises the concept of “strategic children” and having a strategic outlook means being able to think critically. Good teachers encourage dialog, consider both sides of an issue, reward debate and require multiple sources of information for student assignments.

They remind students that that listening is as important as speaking. As do good parents. Do children observe their parents only talking, or do they also see them listening? Do they see them consider opposing viewpoints or just dismiss them out of hand? Do parents back up their positions with facts or just empty emotional rhetoric?

Murphy concludes with a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.” We need to ensure that the next generation heeds these words, not only so they can take advantage of the ever-accelerating information age, but also so that they can influence their governments to make realistic and informed public policy choices in what is and will continue to be a nuanced and dangerous world.

Chris Lehman MS&T Editor-in-Chief • chris@halldale.com MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

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Cover credit: WATCHKEEPER cover image taken from the WATCHKEEPER Training System produced by SELEX Systems Integration Ltd on behalf of Thales UK for the UK Ministry of Defence UAS PT. Terrain imagery derived from source imagery © Next Perspectives INFOTERRA/PGA/001

front cover

contents ms&T 5/2009

05 Editorial Comment Information Overload. Editor-in-Chief Chris Lehman reflects on critical skills and attitudes for staying informed, but not overwhelmed, and where

08 training technology

feature Articles

to start.

08 Training Technology The Future of Simulation & Training. A ‘virtual roundtable’ of Simulation & Training leaders led by MS&T’s Rick Adams. What does the future hold?

14 Training Transformation UAS Aircrew Training Evolutions. The US Air Force is trialing a new paradigm in response to high UAS aircrew production requirements.

14 training transformation

Chuck Weirauch explains.

18 Training Technology In Deep. Diving in with immersive technologies. Rick Adams checks out some recent applications.

22 TRAINING TECHNOLOGY The Little Game Engine That Can. Delta3D is maturing and is now highly capable. Perry McDowell brings us up to date.

26 National Focus French Military Helicopters. A tour of the French military rotary wing organisation reveals a wide range of type, capabilities and training facilities.

18 training technology

Walter F. Ullrich reports.

30 Show Report AUVSI. The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International met in August of this year. Christopher Prawdzik observes.

32 NEWS Seen and Heard. A round up of developments in simulation and training.

26 National Focus

Edited by Lori Ponoroff.

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

16:53:54

07

Training Technology

Looking Ahead What challenges, changes, and breakthroughs in simulation and training can we look for in the next decade? MS&T’s Rick Adams conducted a “virtual roundtable” discussion with some of the industry’s more influential leaders.

MS&T: What are the most significant challenges for the global military simulation & training community?

Barker/Cubic: Inevitably procurement budgets are expected to decline as the US and other nations face increasing fiscal deficits and competing domestic priorities. Accordingly, budgetary pressures may increase demand for lowercost training solutions emphasizing virtual training applications compared to traditional reliance on live training.

We would expect further consolidation in the live training arena, particularly for ground combat training equipment suppliers. It is not clear that worldwide demand can support five to six players in tactical engagement systems or virtual marksmanship trainers. US procurement practices that emphasize small business set-aside contracts will accelerate consolidation in the industry. Cubic’s large international footprint offers some insulation from these trends, but the company is evaluating how to transfer its core technology capabilities to the tactical arena, which by definition is a much larger market.

Kennedy/Lockheed: The continued pressure on the defense budget will be a challenge for the next several years. Military forces are looking to maximize their training dollars and receive high-quality 08

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

training for the funds they expend. Lockheed Martin has begun developing a series of task trainers that supplement or in some cases, replace dependency on aircraft for flight training. In ground training, we’re developing laptop versions of the Advanced Gunnery Training System that will allow troops to train en route to the battlefield. We just developed the capability to do pre-flight training on an iPhone, and we’re looking at that type of technology in other areas.

Gagne/CAE: Most would agree that the recovery will be slow. Deficit spending will not continue forever and this will impact budget priorities; defense will be scrutinized just like other areas. Militaries will be asked to do more with less.

We actually see the budget challenges as a potential positive for the simulation and training industry. At a macrolevel, simulation offers a number of advantages that address an ever-increasing global threat level and new economic constraints. The cost saving from the use of modeling and simulation is considerable. Some militaries estimate that live training is approximately 10 times more costly than simulation-based training.

The cost of fuel, detrimental environmental impacts, and significant wear and tear on weapon systems all point to the greater use of simulation and synthetic

Participants clockwise from lower left: Kent Statler, Rockwell Collins, Chief Operating Officer, Service; Lt. Gen. David H. Ohle (USA, Ret.), Alion Science and Technology, Sector Senior Vice President and Manager, Defense Operations Integration Sector; Bob Birmingham, L-3, Link Simulation & Training, President; Col. Craig Langhauser, US Army, Director, Research, Development & Engineering Command Simulation & Training Technology Center (RDECOM STTC); Chester Kennedy, Lockheed Martin Simulation, Training & Support, Vice President of Engineering; Ray Barker, Cubic, Executive Vice President, Business Development and Strategy; Jim Takats, Opinicus, Managing Director; Rick Armstrong, FlightSafety Simulation; Martin Gagne, CAE, Group President, Military Products, Training, and Services.

training. Equally important as a market driver, the current state of simulation is so highly realistic that it has become an integral tool for mission preparation and rehearsal.

Takats/Opinicus: There is a significant positive trend to increase the use of Flight Simulation Training Devices (FSTDs) for pilot and mission training in order to significantly reduce the use of military aircraft for flight crew training. The military is adopting more of the practices used by airlines, transitioning to high-fidelity Level D simulators for flight crew training.

The current inventory of military FSTDs comprises many aging devices. In order to obtain flight crew acceptance of these devices, they will need to have performance levels tested and validated, and potentially updated to meet adequate standards. One of the biggest technical validation challenges is availability of adequate flight test data. In the long term this investment will pay for itself several times over; however, it is still often difficult to obtain adequate budget.

Statler/Rockwell: Train like you fight still holds, but training doctrine is being modified to how we are fighting. It’s no longer about air superiority or line up your tanks against my tanks and the one with the most metal wins. Iraq and Afghanistan have dramatically changed from

open terrain engagement to dismounting the vehicle, identifying friend or foe, and where might the IEDs be planted. Inside the tank or Humvee you’re still looking at a display. But when the soldier steps out of the vehicle, we need a higher level of realism than in the past. We’re going to continue to merge domains between virtual and live training, entering a virtual environment with real equipment.

Birmingham/L-3: One challenge is to accelerate the paradigm shift that will move us beyond producing single, independent high-fidelity training devices to delivering total training systems, including a full range of interoperable training devices and training support services.

Without this shift, I think we will continue to see some significant gaps in training capability on major platforms and systems. Examples include the US Air Force’s future F-16 Mission Training Center, the US Army’s Flight School XXI, and the US Navy’s F/A-18C Distributed Mission Trainer. These total training systems have or will be preparing warfighters to meet with mission success in a manner only imagined in years past.

Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: Key technical issues include keeping up with evolving web standards and tools in order to make simulations more user-friendly, interoperable, accessible, and recordable.

The military also needs to be able to use simulations that are service-oriented and customizable for their specific training requirements throughout the DoD. At the same time, they often have to deal with merging incomplete datasets from multiple sources. Alion is addressing these issues by looking first at the infrastructures and environments used by the DoD, finding ways to streamline the development and distribution of M&S tools and applications, and developing and adapting tools for repository integration and access.

Armstrong/FlightSafety: A fundamental challenge is the complexity of the environment. There is so much data coming at the pilot, hundreds of pieces of data, communications, electronic warfare, lots of multi-tasking. These will only get more complex as time goes on. We need to help the pilot make sense of all that, find a way to fuse that into some coherent picture. We need a very immersive environment, better motion cues, better visual cues.

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

09

MS&T: What changes in the process would enhance your organization’s ability to provide the training needed by warfighters?

Birmingham/L-3: At the top of the list have to be issues surrounding our government acquisition and procurement processes. Quite simply, acquisition timelines are not in line with users’ requirements for fielding training systems. There is a huge disparity between the users’ sense of when they need a training system fielded and how long in fact it takes us to complete the acquisition process. This condition is exac10

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

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erbated by the rapid advance of techfollowing some of the B2B principles nology. The technical capabilities of a being using in industry for Just-in-Time product can become out of date during manufacturing and shipping of supplies. the normal acquisition cycle. We realize Online brochures and catalogs have our customers will benefit from quicker, streamlined ordering for both consumers cheaper, and better solutions to remain and businesses. mission ready and to evolve with the real Barker/Cubic: Most international cusworld challenges. We’ve got to work coltomers procure large training contracts lectively – industry and government – to on a “turnkey” basis providing an avenue find a way out of this acquisition quagfor the equipment supplier to deliver and mire and make quicker, cheaper, better a support their own equipment, typically reality. on a multi-year basis. This offers more Armstrong/FlightSafety: The whole stability to the customer and contractor acquisition process is so complicated alike, as the prime systems integrator is and takes so long, we’re all “dust” by the responsible for system performance as time a program becomes a real thing. well as support. The US procurement Statler/Rockwell: With acquisition environment is more complicated as community turnover and reductions … support contracts may be awarded under downsizing, retirements, the DoD has large multi-year omnibus contracts or set lost a lot of the skill sets to write requireaside for small business, distancing the ments. They did not see the criticality of equipment supplier from the end user. that conclusion and fell into a big probKennedy/Lockheed: We see the lem. There’s a lot of hiring going on, but expansion of private-public initiatives what’s underestimated is the years of (PPIs), especially in the international expertise lost. The new people do not market. We’ve proven that the concept have 15-20 years of experience. works both in the UK and in Singapore.

Gagne/CAE: The traditional procureWe’ve entered into a partnership with the ment process is still quite lengthy, and respective ministries of defense and partmilitary programs have a consistent nered to provide all their aircraft, mainrecord of sliding to the right. We have tenance and, in some cases, instructor seen some excellent examples of propilots. Working with banks, we’ve been curements being done very quickly to able to finance these endeavors and cresupport urgent operational requireate what we believe is a model for future ments; however, the length of the normal flight training. What’s needed to make procurement process “ … lack of open competition limits the in most countries could still use some improvewarfighter from access to the best, most ment. We recognize that cost-effective training equipment.” procurement agencies Jim Takats, Opinicus may not have enough staff to adequately execute the backlog PPIs a success is first, an understanding of acquisitions they are responsible for in of what the customer wants, secondly, a fair and timely manner. However, this the ability to partner, and finally, a longcan significantly impact both our ability term contract to make the business case. to provide the necessary training to our Armstrong/FlightSafety: Governwarfighters, as well as our ability to plan ment-industry partnerships like Flight and manage our business.

School XXI make a great deal of sense.

Takats/Opinicus: The current procureThey bring great value to the military ment process excludes competition in customer. Over time we can be more many cases. The lack of open competiefficient; this is our core competency – tion limits Opinicus’ ability to participate training. Under Private Financing Initiain many procurements as a prime contives (PFIs), the provider has all the risk, tractor, even though it is well recognized owns the assets, the simulator, the buildthat we are fully capable of meeting the ings. The government only pays for what requirements. I believe the lack of open they use. competition limits the warfighter from Statler/Rockwell: The technology is access to the best, most cost-effective there to run the same database across training equipment. multiple domains. There’s some of that at Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: The procurethe Service level but not much across the ment process could be made faster by DoD; we’re seeing a lack of leadership

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Training Technology

Birmingham/L-3: Realism in the training system is absolutely essential whether you’re looking through a FLIR at 16,000 feet or binoculars from less than a mile. The content of what you experience must replicate the actual conditions of your operating environment. The training solution must also correlate with all players in the training scenario. For example, it’s no longer acceptable to have 50 to 100 people and vehicles in the training scenario when today’s real world operating environments, such as dense urban areas, are cluttered with thousands of entities.

Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: We’ve also seen that modeling new environments sometimes require soft sciences such as social, behavioral, and cultural behaviors and systems representation. We’re also working on making M&S training tools more accessible to more supervisory leaders and frontline soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. Our eC2 solution, for example, puts networked training literally in the hands of warfighters by operating on smartphones and other mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone.

Gagne/CAE: CAE is somewhat unique in that the focus of the entire company is modeling, simulation, and training. We invest a significant amount on research and development specific to this niche; we announced earlier this year the company will invest up to C$714 million in Project Falcon, an R&D program that will span the next five years. The goal is to expand CAE’s current modeling and simulation technologies, develop new ones and increase our capabilities beyond training into other areas of the aerospace and defense market, such as the use of simulation-based solutions for analysis and operations.

Boeing’s groundbreaking integration of Live, Virtual and Constructive training domains (I-LVC) sets a new standard of training and readiness. With I-LVC, real aircraft can be integrated into exercises with simulators and computer-generated threats.

It’s the latest addition to Boeing’s full spectrum of training capabilities, including live range training— unparalleled training options that reduce cost and most importantly, maximize personnel readiness.

Training Technology

ing is the application of artificial intelligence. AI for training will reduce the amount of “behind the scenes” support staff necessary to run a simulation while drastically improving the quality of the learning experience. AI for training can be applied at all levels and types of education and training. For example, AI will enable dynamic tutors to assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses prior to the start and throughout the training.

This will lead to tailored instruction that challenges the student and provides a higher quality of training in less time.

AI will enable more natural human interaction in virtual “The world’s security challenges... aren’t environments, expanding getting any less complicated, and consethe role of virtual simulaquences are rising.” tions for cultural and social Chester Kennedy, Lockheed Martin interaction training.

Kennedy/Lockheed: One of the most impactful technological Kennedy/Lockheed: The world’s secubreakthroughs is the emerging ability to rity challenges are not going away. They model and simulate the function of the aren’t getting any less complicated, and human brain. It’s rapidly evolving today consequences are rising. As the scope of at a very startling pace and the applicathe information technology system has tions are endless -- from training to intelevolved from stovepipes to the enterligence to decision support for every kind prise, so have the vulnerabilities. Almost of logistics system imaginable. A good one in four Federal Chief Information example of the application of this techOfficers surveyed said the IT infrastrucnology is the ability to create intelligent ture that supports their department or avatars that interact in a controlled 3D agency’s mission has become more vulvirtual world to provide highly specialnerable. And six in 10 said security was ized, just-in-time training. Other key an area where their IT workforce had breakthroughs that are enabled by modgaps in skill and knowledge. I believe eling of cognition include the ability to that cyber security is one of the greatest create instruction tailored to each indichallenges we face, and, as a contractor vidual learner. As we increase our knowlcommunity, we must work together with edge of how individuals “learn” and our the government to ensure the IT infraability to track their learning across their structure we build and maintain for our entire life, we will be able to customize customers and for ourselves is secure. delivery of training for each individual for This is especially critical when we talk each task we train. about distributed training across the Gagne/CAE: With the ongoing investcountry and the world. Finally, we need ments in synthetic environments, human to think globally and build on the partbehavior modeling, executable architecnerships that are absolutely essential for tures, and common operating pictures, improving global security. the next decade “AI will enable more natural human interaction should get us close in virtual environments …” to achieving a persistent, fully-correCol. Craig Langhauser, US Army lated and interoperable dynamic synthetic environment.

MS&T: What technological breakThis will finally enable the warfighter to throughs do you anticipate in simuplan for missions using simulation for lation & training in the next several “what-if” analysis and decision-making, years, and what impact will they rehearse for missions in real-time, and have? then execute missions that will leave less Col. Langhauser/US Army RDEroom for surprise outcomes.

COM: The technological breakthrough Birmingham/L-3: We expect continthat I anticipate in simulation & trainacross the DoD. Services are kind of moving in the same direction, but programs are very isolationist by nature. It’s a major inhibitor for full interoperability. It may take years to come to fruition. We need some upfront funding by industry and government, maybe through DARPA. Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: M&S needs to have better security systems to integrate multiple levels of security. The answer is to use current trusted solutions that the government endorses to build an impenetrable security environment for both mobile and fixed assets.

12

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

ued game-changing breakthroughs in ground and air vehicles, sensors, networking, and associated information technology used in both military and homeland security operations. This technology explosion is being powered by nanotechnologies providing more and more compute power with incredible memory storage along with nearly unlimited wireless bandwidth. During the next years it would not be at all surprising to see technology innovations occurring in a matter of months versus a couple of years. In particular we are seeing this explosion being manifested in the accelerated use of robotics (unmanned aerial systems and artificial intelligence) and intelligent sensors in all areas of military and homeland security operations.

Future systems will be able to perceive the situation and act independently with limited or little human input, which will greatly shorten decision time. In fact, this is being seen today as robotic systems make UAS more autonomous and automated. While humans remain “in the loop” in operating UAS today, 10 years from now UAS operators are likely to be “on the loop” as they monitor the execution of certain decisions made by UAS systems. Simultaneous advancement in artificial intelligence will enable systems to make combat decisions that may not require human input. With systems that are more capable and autonomous, the question our customers and this industry will have to address will revolve around what training is truly needed and what is the most effective way for that training to be delivered.

Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: As visualization capabilities continue to mature, the user can have access to 3-dimensional and 4-dimensional (with time) animations and scenes in the simulation environment. Holography will also fit in this category, but the use of LIDAR [Light Detection and Ranging] and other imagery production tools will create better 3D and 4D visualizations for the decision maker to see and understand a system of systems. Customers will ask for more in their virtual worlds, training environments, and even on mobile training tools.

Gagne/CAE: Another technological breakthrough that could have a dramatic impact on simulation and training would be eye-limiting visual systems.

is unlimited; however a cultural change perspective, there is increasing emphawill be required by leadership in order sis on the soldier and small-unit trainto realize this potential. Many parts of ing, reflecting recent experience in Iraq government and academia now want and Afghanistan. The line between to represent their domains in a virtual training and mis“ … LIDAR and other imagery production tools online community of players. The Intersion rehearsal is will create better 3D and 4D visualizations for net allows this capability, but there is still becoming increasa lot of improvement needed. The virtual ingly blurred. As the decision maker …” worlds need to rapidly incorporate large a result, non-traLt. Gen. David H. Ohle (USA, Ret.), Alion areas and multiple behaviors to estabditional training lish military training environments that companies with tactical backgrounds are plays that equal the resolution that our would not require travel and relocation trying to enter the training market, leveyes can see, the challenge will be to to training centers. These training centeraging their knowledge of C4I systems, produce databases with the rich coners are expensive to maintain and may communication systems, and “blue force tent and depth that we see in the real someday become obsolete as a result of tracking” systems. world. high fidelity and capable virtual world Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: The training Takats/Opinicus: I believe the biggest training centers. ms&t potential for serious games technology technology enhancements we will see will continue to be in the area of visual cueing, as this will continue to improve towards eye-limiting resolution and the use of more detailed databases.

Armstrong/FlightSafety:The fidelity of motion and visual systems continue to get better and better, easier to update. Air traffic control systems are a challenge, adding that environment to existing simulators. The UAS environment is going to proliferate. There are a lot of moving parts to bring together.

Statler/Rockwell: Realism? We haven’t seen anything yet. Next-generation image generators will not be an incremental improvement. Not stair-step, but a quantum step. Longer term, I expect continued emphasis on how we train without motion as we understand how the brain senses motion through the ear lobes. It’s a holy grail of simulation. This will be a big step in cost and transportability, a new level of training that can be deployed to the field.

Lt. Gen. Ohle/Alion: With improvewww.selex-si-uk.com ments in processing power and fidelity, mobile training devices and laptops repTRANSFORMING TRAINING. resent a significant capability to enhance SELEX Systems Integration is a Prime Contracting and readiness and improve training. Mobile Systems Integration business that now incorporates the long-established training capability of VEGA, VEGA device applications are also key enablers Deutschland and VEGA France. We have evolved a for learning cognitive and physical skills. dedicated Training Solutions team that has nearly The transmission and interoperabiltwo decades’ experience of enabling organisations to ity of certain systems make sharing as transform their training and enhance their capability. easy as bumping two iPhones together.

Over 65,000 applications are available already. More applications are being built daily and customizable ones need to be developed for military training enhancement and mobility. Security continues to improve on all mobile devices (e.g., new Apple iPhone 3GS with its remote denialof-use feature).

Barker/Cubic: From a ground combat There are consistent improvements being made in visual displays in areas such as resolution, clarity, contrast and brightness. Once we have visual dis-

Towards a safer world.

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Training Transformation

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Aircraft System.

Image credit: US Air Force/Jason Epley.

Transforming UAS Training The US Air Force, faced with UAS aircrew shortages, is transforming UAS aircrew production - tackling legacy manning and training practices. Chuck Weirauch explains.

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here is an increasing demand for qualified unmanned aerial system (UAS) pilots and sensor operators; military services throughout the world are working to find innovative ways and means to educate and train them. The US Air Force in particular is finding that traditional approaches to training are not sufficient to meet the demand.

In August, The Air Force rolled out its new “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047” in Washington, DC and at the service’s Academic Outreach Symposium held at the University of North Dakota. While the report covers the need to expand the current UAS fleet, the development of new airframe and sensor technology and the creation of new UAS operational doctrine, it also addresses the need to provide enough qualified service UAS crew members throughout this time frame. According to the report, “The explosive growth in UAS creates the need to dramatically increase training capacity, quality, and efficiency in UAS systems and capabilities. The requirement is to expand to over 1,100 crews in the next 3-5 years.”

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One cited goal in the UAS Flight Plan report is that all initial UAS qualification training be conducted through the use of high-fidelity simulators. The report states the lack of capability in the current generation of simulators to replicate a realistic training environment is a key contributor to the shortfall of qualified operators.

The report notes the higher the fidelity of the simulation, the less the need for live flight training. Potential training throughput would be doubled by not being tied to range, weather and other aircraft sortie limitations and more resources could be devoted to combat.

Once initial training is complete, UAS crews could maintain continuation currencies and mission skill sets without generating home station sorties.

The Air Force is taking another look at its policy of requiring manned flight training experience and moving manned flight crews directly into unmanned flight training programs. The service is currently conducting a “beta test” of a completely new training program with the goal to develop a UAS pilot career field with specialized UAS training distinct from current manned aircraft pilot train-

ing. According to the UAS report, such a non-traditional pilot training path creates an additional source of UAS operators and relieves the UAS manpower burden on the current Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training (SUPT) pipeline.

Furthermore, the training path can be tailored to the needs of the UAS community.

According to Jeff Wiseman, the Air Education and Training Command (AETC)’s UAS Training Branch Chief at Randolph Air Force Base, TX, the only current high-fidelity UAS simulators available are the Predator Mission Aircrew Training Systems (PMATS), most of which are located at the Formal Training Unit (FTU) at Creech AFB, NM. The PMATS, developed by L-3 Link Simulation & Training, is used for initial qualification training for MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 aircrews before they enter mission qualification training at their assigned squadrons.

New UAS Training Paths The AETC is developing a new highfidelity UAS desktop trainer for initial Predator and Reaper-specific initial qualification training. In the meantime, Wiseman explained, AETC is using a

desktop trainer derived from a Maryland Air National Guard A-10C ground attack aircraft trainer in the simulator portion of the new UAS Fundamentals Course. This course is a part of two new UAS initial UAS aircrew training programs designed to help increase the number of qualified UAS pilots, he elaborated. Once students graduate from these basic, fundamental UAS training courses, they proceed to the FTU at Creech for more advanced training and then on to mission qualification training at their squadrons.

The first non-traditional UAS initial training course, developed and conducted by AETC at Randolph AFB beginning in November 2008, consisted of graduates of the service’s full undergraduate pilot training program. However, students in this group have never flown in combat operations before. The traditional approach has been to send only pilots and navigators who had previously conducted a tour in an operational aircraft to the FTU at Creech, Wiseman explained.

The students in this new AETC course at Randolph receive initial combat training via the new UAS Fundamentals Course.

The curriculum includes over a hundred hours of academic instruction and UAS desktop simulator time.

The second new AETC non-traditional UAS training course is referred to as the “beta test” and is geared to a new breed of UAS crewmember. Those accepted into the course are those airmen who previously have not had any flight training or experience. The Air Force is hoping that, based on the suc-

Above UND’s Predator pilot and instructor Michael Nelson.

Image credit: US Air Force/David Lipp.

cess of this course, this new UAS initial training approach will provide a new pipeline UAS pilots and sensor operators.

This new avenue is intended to reduce the strain on the service’s cadre of experienced pilots who now are reassigned from manned flight operations to UAS operations.

According to Wiseman, in addition to the UAS Fundamentals Course, the beta test curriculum consists of some actual flight training in a small aircraft to provide and understanding of the basics of flight and what it takes to maneuver an aircraft.

Also in the curriculum are nine weeks of instrument academics and procedures training conducted in T-6 Texan flight simulators at Randolph, for a total of 113 academic and 36 flight simulator hours.

A second beta test group of students has begun training at Randolph.

The first beta test class began in June 2009, and its graduates have completed their advanced initial training at the Creech FTU and are now waiting to be assigned to their operational squadrons for mission qualification training. The beta course graduates’ performance in this training and in actual operations will determine whether the Air Force will expand the course initially into low and eventually full production, Wiseman said.

A decision by the Air Force Chief of Staff to move forward with the beta concept is expected in early 2010, he added.

“We’re going through this initial test phase to see if we got the training right and find out if we met the requirements,” Wiseman explained. “We’re really forced towards this kind of training product because we don’t have enough pilots to fill the need. Right now we’re really draining the (manned) pilot force and we need to come up with a new supply.

Overall, though, we are going to see more and more simulator time and less actual flight time in UAS training programs. ”

UAS College Education An alternative means responding to the burgeoning demand for qualified UAS crews is a four-year college degree program. This August, the University of North Dakota (UND)’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences began its first classes in a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautics in UAS Operations. The university may be the only one

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Training Transformation

to currently offer such a degree program.

The university was named as a Department of Defense Center of Excellence for UAS Education in 2006. Also in August, the Air Force held its first Academic Outreach UAS Symposium at UND, where the service unveiled its “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047” document.

Along with an emphasis on ground and aircraft systems, the four-year program will stress sensor system operations. The program is bolstered by the extensive flight training curricula already in place at UND Aero for commercial aviation careers. Graduates will be able to directly transition into Air Force UAS training or commercial UAS operations.

The UND Center also features a currently restricted range at the North Dakota National Guard’s Camp Grafton Training Center, where students will be able to fly UAS as a part of their degree program. According to Center Director Jeff Kappenman, the Army National Guard is anticipating the conduct of Shadow UAS training at this facility as well, which UND would support. The Center is also working to expand this air corridor so that it could become a center for the joint Air Force and Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) research study UND is conducting on the means to operate UAS safely in unrestricted airspace, Kappenman added.

Once these students graduate, they won’t have to go far to get their first opportunities to fly Air Force UAS. According to UND Aero Director of Flight Operations and North Dakota Air National Guard Brig. Gen. Al Palmer, the Grand Forks Air Force Base is moving towards to all-UAS operations that will include Global Hawk UAS in the next two years, and the state Air National Guard is transitioning out of F-16 jet fighter aircraft to MQ-1 Predator UAS operations. Palmer is also Chief of Staff and Air Component Commander for the Guard. The US Customs and Border Protection Agency also has an Air Wing stationed at Grand Forks International Airport, and plans to have up to six MQ-9 Reaper UAS operating out of the Air Force base for Homeland Security operations, Palmer said. Some agency UAS personnel are currently undergoing training at UND. Working with the small company BoldMethod, UND is also developing MQ-1 Predator UAS courseware for the Air Force UAS Center of Excellence at

Creech AFB. The partnership initially won a subcontract to develop MQ-9 Reaper training curricula for that installation and has delivered the first element of that courseware. This work is expected to be expanded in the near future, Kappenman said.

Human Factors Just as human factors elements play a considerable role in the safety of manned aircraft operations, so they do in UAS operations. Various studies have concluded that the classic “dirty dozen” human factors recognized in the aviation community, including fatigue, stress and lack of situational awareness, have played a considerable role in UAS accidents. One Air Force study concluded that “USAF goals for mishap reduction cannot be achieved without aggressively attacking the problem of human factors” and concluded that poor human systems integration (HSI) was the leading driver of UAV mishaps.

To help further research on how human factors can influence UAS operations, the UND UAS Center of Excellence has partnered with the new Northern Plains Center for Behavioral Research located on the UND campus. This facility will investigate psychological and behavioral factors as they impact UAS pilot performance, UAS HSI issues and support UAS and simulation applications research as they relate to UAS training and curricula development.

“We will be looking at various physiological and psychological variables related to how well someone trains on UAS platforms,” said UND professor of psychology Rick Ferraro. “This Center is dedicated solely to UAS issues. These include cognitive, neuropsychology and training issues such as decision-making, problem-solving and perception. We also will study such areas as complacency issues and the taking on of more risks because of distance, as well as how nutrition affects cognitive performance and information processing,” “The Air Force is looking to universities to help their UAS dreams come to fruition,” Kappenman summed up.

“North Dakota has all of the pieces of the puzzle for unmanned aircraft systems; unencumbered airspace, a university with a premier flight training program and an Air Force base that is growing into a UAS mission.” ms&t

High-fidelity UAS simulation key to Air Force crew training future The Air Force UAS Flight Plan 2009-2047 depends on high fidelity simulators to meet UAS crewmember production. MS&T spoke with L-3 Link Simulation & Training’s Lenny Genna, vice president for Rotary Wing, Unmanned Aerial and Ground Training Systems. Link’s Predator Mission Aircrew Training System (PMATS) is currently the only high-fidelity UAS simulator.

MS&T: What are Link’s thoughts concerning the Air Force UAS Flight Plan document’s statement on the need for high-fidelity UAS simulation?

Genna: The Air Force wants highfidelity simulation to be maximized in the near-term to provide full training for unmanned aircrews. Their vision will provide greater operational asset availability from vehicles that are currently displaced for aircrew training requirements.

The ability to provide aircrews with realistic training environments is being driven by rapidly advancing simulation technologies. At L-3 Link we believe that high-fidelity simulation will provide the unmanned aircraft community even greater value than has been enjoyed by manned aircraft training. The end result will be efficiently trained unmanned aircrews that are better prepared to achieve mission success.

MS&T: What recent PMATS developments have been made in relation to achieving high fidelity UAS simulation?

Genna: The Air Force states that its first priority for future simulators is for a high fidelity database that will support realistic sensor displays. We are working with the Air Force to achieve this capability on PMATS devices and this past July began to integrate our HD World product enhancements to achieve this goal. HD World will add 500 persistent entities to the visual system that bring life to database. In addition, entities in PMATS visual databases now will accurately simulate physics-based actions and reactions just as you would expect in the real world.

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Training Technology

Everyone’s Going Immersive Once the exclusive domain of military training, virtual reality is emerging for a wide range of complex tasks which require highly skilled operators – including healthcare, process operations, energy, and rail transport, as well as aircrews, dismounted soldiers, and first responders. Rick Adams surveys some of the latest immersive applications.

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ne of my favorite t-shirts has the statement, “I know the voices aren’t real... but sometimes they have good ideas.”

When I bought the shirt a few years ago, I didn’t expect that some “voices” – coming from artificially intelligent avatars in immersive virtual reality training environments – might actually provide invaluable advice for learning new skills or dealing with challenging conflict situations.

“It’s about having a conversation, a social interaction with these ‘autonomous characters’,” explains Dr. Randall Hill, Jr., executive director of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California. “The characters can reason about the environment, express emotion, and communicate through not only speech, but also gesture. We want to give them the ability to perceive you and your gestures and facial expressions.”

The ICT is developing a 3D demon18

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stration environment for the US Army referred to as Flatworld Wide Area Mixed Reality, a virtual world that combines real-world props with projection screens that depict not only virtual humans which soldiers can interact with but also show bullet holes on the walls during a hostile engagement. The system tracks a soldier’s movement through the building interior, and manipulates the virtual environment based on the position of the trainee. By changing the content on the life-size screens, soldiers can experience a different scenario every time.

Have you ever wished you were taller (without resorting to platform shoes)?

Lockheed Martin recently filed a patent for a portable immersive environment in which your motions move an avatar through a virtual space. The avatar can be scaled – that is, if you’re 5-foot-7 but prefer to be 6-foot-2, the images you see through your head-mounted display will be from the perspective of your taller

A simulated Middle Eastern village at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Infantry Immersion Trainer.

Image credit: US Navy/John Williams.

alter ego. The system incorporates head gear and handheld controllers, motion capture, and kinematics.

First-Fight Preparation Many of the military’s efforts in immersive technologies are driven by the pressing need for dealing with the new “irregular warfare” required of ground troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere: counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, stabilization, and reconstruction.

“Our ground combat forces suffer more than 80 percent of our casualties, and we can provide them with highquality live, virtual, and constructive simulation capabilities to reduce this risk. Mixing brick and mortar surround-

ings with live actors and interactive virtual tools will provide unprecedented realism for our ground troops and better replicate the chaos of the ‘first fights’ so our youngest warriors are prepared for the tactical and ethical demands of combat among non-combatants,” stated Gen. James Mattis, US Marine Corps, Commander US Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM), in testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.

Col. John Thompson, Future Learning Division director for the US Air Force Air Education and Training Command, concurs: “If we don’t adapt to changing technologies and figure out how to best use them, we won’t continue to deliver unrivaled education and training.”

“Virtual environments are immersive and collaborative,” Thompson says. “Students feel like a part of the team that’s getting the mission done.”

One of the more visible initiatives is the Future Immersive Training Environment (FITE), sponsored by the USJFCOM. The goal is to provide small units the capabilities they will need so their “first firefight is no worse than the last simulation they experienced.” The Office of Naval Research heads the two-year, US$36-million program. It’s not yet clear if the FITE will adopt single-user scenarios or a multi-player collaborative environment.

There are also numerous focused immersion efforts, often through smaller companies. Ottawa’s OSI Geospatial for example, is developing a prototype training environment to prepare Canadian forces to use protective counter-improvised explosive devices. Based on a similar program delivered to the US Marine Corps, OSI uses “cognitive synthetic agents’ which “act like humans, provide safety information, and automatically keep track of missions.”

Binghamton Simulation Company (BSC) is delivering an Aircrew Virtual Environment Trainer (AVET) to the US Naval Air Systems Command to train crew chiefs, aerial gunners, search and rescue, and vertical replenishment personnel in various skill sets and situational awareness. The AVET is expected to reduce the number of hours and airframe time needed to fly training missions.

Heartwood C2Act, a San Francisco animation studio that created cartoon character “Dilbert’s Ultimate House,” has also worked with Raytheon to produce

web-based virtual training courses for the Killer Bee unmanned aerial vehicle and Patriot missile multi-echelon training.

Culture Warriors “Special emphasis must be placed on human, cultural, language, and cognitive skills,” notes Gen. Mattis. “A ‘cognitive’ warrior knows how to acquire knowledge, process information from multiple sources, and make timely, accurate decisions in complex, ethically challenging and ever-changing environments.

We must place greater emphasis on the study of history, culture, and language.

These three elements are being more broadly incorporated into training and

The Challenge of Correlating Dense Data “The levels of data density have increased a million-fold over the past 12 years,” declares Philippe Perey, CAE technology director.

And with the increased demand for physics-based sensor simulation and higher correlation across different devices, “It’s not about to slow down.”

Perey suggests requirements for nextgeneration simulation content “bring into question many of the fundamental methods and procedures that have

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Training Technology

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worked since the beginning of simulation.”

Perey thinks the public domain Common Data Base (CDB) architecture, which Montreal-based CAE originally developed for the US Special Operations Forces and is now made available through CAE-owned Presagis, can be a “transforming catalyst.”

Nick Giannias, Presagis vice president of research and technology, says “The availability of high-performance computers, especially multi-core processors, has brought into question the need for proprietary databases and the potential for using the additional computational capacity to standardize on a single database format.”

Unlike previous content re-use efforts such as offline interchange format SE Core, the CDB enables both massive data storage and run-time publishing of visual and sensor imagery.

Presagis is preparing tools to enable their Terra Vista 6 to generate databases to CDB format, which would decrease processing time. And Bohemia Interactive, Australia, may integrate their popular VBS2 game engine with the Common Data Base. “Our customers have made it abundantly clear that there is a requirement for VBS2 to support larger runtime published terrain areas with a dynamic terrain grid, primarily to facilitate correlation with other simulations,” explains Peter Morrison, managing director. “Bohemia is currently evaluating native support for CDB as a possible solution. Supporting ‘streaming’ terrain is certainly on our short-term development roadmap.”

VBS2 v1.3 has been delivered to select military customers for acceptance testing.

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exercise scenarios, including those employing the latest modeling and simulation technology.”

The Virtual Cultural Awareness Trainer (VCAT) has been launched on the US military’s Joint Knowledge Online portal. VCAT is tailored to personnel preparing to deploy to the Horn of Africa, and provides taskbased operational cultural information, including civil affairs, security cooperation, and humanitarian assistance. The program was created by Los Angeles-based Alelo, which previously produced Tactical Iraqi, gamebased language and cultural training used by thousands of American and Australian soldiers and winner of the 2007 Serious Games Challenge.

ICTs ELECT BILAT social simulation is in evaluation by the US Army.

The ICT is developing Flatworld Wide Area Mixed Reality for the US Army.

Image credit: Institute of Creative Technology.

It is intended to provide a compelling environment for US Army officers to practice conducting bi-lateral engagements or meetings with local leaders. Trainees must pay special attention to cultural sensitivities.

Embracing Simulation A Ukrainian company, Program-Ace, is just one of perhaps hundreds of small businesses worldwide seeking to break into the burgeoning virtual reality training market. They’ve developed an emergency evacuation simulator for employees of large office

buildings, airports, railway and subway stations, shopping centers, factories, and scientific laboratories. The scenarios include navigating low-visibility conditions due to smoke concentration. Company founder Oleg Fonarov claims their Ace3D engine can render “almost photo-realistic” 3D scenes in real time.

Texas-based Invensys recently unveiled its EYEsim game-style immersive solution using a stereoscopic headset for training process engineers to deal with procedures and crisis situations at chemical, oil, and natural gas facilities. A start-up procedure for a refinery, for example, can include 250 tasks and require eight hours. Invensys vice president for advanced applications, Tobias Scheele, says users can practice rarely performed but potentially volatile tasks such as plant shutdowns. The prototype models a French refinery and required 1800 photographs, combined with models, to create walk-throughs for only one-fifth of the complex.

The US military’s Joint Medical Simulation Technology Research and Development Center (JMSTRDC) is exploring an avatar-based “virtual patient” simulation with physiology and human behavior characteristics.

The architecture and curriculum may include connections between the avatar and more traditional manikinbased simulations.

UK company 3D VSL has produced rail simulations to visually represent

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Enhanced Learning Environment using Creative Technology – Bilateral Negotiations Trainer (ELECT BiLAT).

Image credit: Institute of Creative Technology/Game Production Services.

trains, drivers’ cabins, stations, and passenger environments as a complement to on-the-job and full simulator training. Apps are systems familiarization, infrastructure management, crowd movement, and security. 3D VSL uses digital photographs combined with their own game engine to create their models.

Even Saudi Arabia is joining the VR community. The University of California, San Diego, is assisting with what is touted as “the world’s most advanced visualization suite” at the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Dubbed “Cornea,” the 100-million pixel system will provide pure 20/20 visual acuity in a fully three-dimensional environment for materials scientists, biomedical researchers, electrical engineers, and other researchers. ms&t

Among the upgrades are unmanned vehicle simulation (including unmanned aerial vehicle weapons and unmanned ground vehicle ability to climb stairs, disarm IEDs, or place explosives), air-to-air refueling, launching and recovering a submersible from a ship, plus submarine dive and torpedo capability. The new Face Editor can rapidly texture avatar faces from photographs.

“The content of what you experience must replicate the actual conditions of your operating environment: dense urban areas, cluttered with thousands of entities,” emphasizes Bob Birmingham, L-3 Link Simulation & Training president. Texas-headquartered Link’s HD World product line “mimics the real world through high-definition visual displays, a physics-based environment generator providing thousands of entities, takes advantage of gaming technologies, and uses commercial off-theshelf (COTS) capabilities to minimize cost.”

One dilemma limiting interoperability of military simulators is that many legacy systems simply cannot handle the visual and sensor simulation horsepower now available.

Perey says that “geo-representative” database enhancements can be applied to older “bland databases” to make them more useful.

Using CAE’s “motif compositing” technique and Presagis’ Terra Vista tools, “smart rules” algorithms can be applied to compile roads, bridges, villages, and other features typical of the real-world area but without requiring terabytes of storage capacity. “Fully modeled areas can be surrounded by geo-representative areas,” Perey says. “It’s a progressive way to bring a lot of cueing to the environment and a more compelling representation.”

Training Technology

The Delta3D Game Engine is Reaching Maturity Delta3D is maturing from just a low cost engine to a low cost engine with superior capabilities. Delta3D Executive Director Perry McDowell reports the current status.

A

lthough the Department of Defense continues to fund several large programs to provide simulation tools to build training games and simulations, one smaller effort continues to build momentum. The Delta3D game engine, while not funded directly, maintains a steady energy, expanding its capabilities and uses and providing both government and industry with both basic functionality and the capability to expand. It has grown from what was little more than an API tying several different libraries together to a highly mature engine. How it has done this is an example of how using open source software can provide significant capabilities with minimum funding for infrastructure.

Delta3D is an open source game engine built at the Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) MOVES Institute. Delta3D was created to provide a commodity solution so those building games and simulations had a low cost alternative to expensive simulation suites and game engines. It is built atop other open source libraries (see figure 1) which provide much of its functionality; our design team’s philosophy has been only to build modules itself when no existing open source solution exists. A full description of the reasons for Delta3D’s creation and design philosophy can be found in (McDowell, 2005).

However, as Delta3D begins to add more features and improves usability, it moves beyond just being a low cost

engine to a low cost engine delivering superior capabilities. While companies and government users certainly appreciate lower cost software, if that software cannot meet user’s needs, it is worthless. Although Delta3D is still not on the level of the best game engines used to build AAA titles, such as Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, Valve’s Source™ engine, or Crytek’s CryENGINE 3®, professional development teams have proven Delta3D to be capable of creating top of the line simulations and games for a wide range of areas. Delta3D has matured into an engine that provides the high level capabilities users need without the high licensing costs generally associated with such capabilities.

Recent Improvements The core development team at MOVES continues to add functionality and improve the engine as it builds applications for research projects, of which we will only cover three. Recently, we have added the capability to control avatars using inverse kinematics (IK). This gives users significantly more options and control of avatars in their applications.

More information on this can be found in (Guerrero, 2008).

Additionally, we have greatly improved Delta3D’s Simulation, Training and Game Editor (STAGE) by greatly expanding its capabilities. For example, it is now possible to easily put linear objects into a level using the editor.

Also, the user can use the editor to build

Figure 1 - The Delta3D architecture. Image credit: NPS MOVES. 22

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buildings in a multitude of shapes, giving the designer the capability to quickly and easily produce visual diversity in the scene.

Similarly, we have added an object viewer, which allows developers to view objects as they would appear in the world. The appearance of an object is a combination of the object’s geometry, textures, scene lighting and any shading applied. Often, this leads to a difficult process to perfect the object’s appearance by modifying one or more of those qualities and then restarting the application to view the object. Since this is an iterative process, it normally takes many (scores, or even hundreds) of modifications until the object’s appearance is perfected. In the object viewer, any of these can be quickly modified and immediately viewed, cutting the time per iteration by a huge factor. This is the kind of feature that we are trying to add to make the engine much easier for developers to use.

One of the biggest advantages of open source products, Delta3D included, is the ability of users to modify the product. This means that if a product doesn’t meet the user’s exact requirements, the user is free to modify it to do so. Likewise, if the user requires a functionality that is not included, the user can add it.

While the benefit to the user of getting software that exactly meets their needs is obvious, quite often the user will submit the changes or additions to the open source project. The project managers then fold this code back into the code

Figure 2 - Image of water model in USCG app for SRI. Image credit: NPS MOVES.

base, and all users benefit from the improved code. This has been done throughout Delta3D’s life, and is expanding as the user base increases more rapidly.

As an example, Alion Science and Technology needed a robust water model for a submarine training application it was building for Northrop-Grumman; none existed in Delta3D. Engineers at Alion built one using Gerstner waves computed with per pixel shading on the GPU that they submitted back as part of the engine. We at the MOVES Institute, and other Delta3D users, were able to use the new code in a low cost application (figure 2) that required a water model, but did not have the resources to build one. This shows how open source projects continue to advance for the entire community with the contributions of each different company.

Alion has been involved in the development of Delta3D from the beginning and probably has used Delta3D more than any other company. Curtiss Murphy, Project Manager of Alion

Science and Technology, said “We have been using Delta3D for years on dozens of M&S projects for nearly every branch of DoD. It is robust and mature and we have direct access to the source, allowing us to change it when and how we need to meet our customer’s requirements.” One of the major improvements that Alion has added is the Simulation Core (SimCore). SimCore has 3+ years of maturity, dozens of adopters, and 125K+ lines of libraries, utilities, unit tests and demo projects.

Although SimCore was developed and is maintained by Alion, like the base engine it is freely available under the Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). The SimCore project is designed to help new modeling and simulation projects get running quickly.

It provides a set of actors, components, and utilities designed for a networked simulation environment using either HLA or Client/ Server. SimCore was created to make it easier for developers to build an application from scratch.

SimCore has a robust infrastructure for entities, which can be human avatars, munitions, or land, sea, or air vehicles. All entities understand 3D models, damage states, publish rates, dead reckoning, and ground clamping and can be configured for HLA via an XML file. They also understand whether they are simulated locally or remotely via the network. SimCore entities understand physics, and it has direct support for features such as large terrains, ocean rendering, articulated parts, and coordinate conversion.

The most popular feature of SimCore is the Stealth Viewer. The Stealth Viewer allows users to view the entire network simulation

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

23

Training Technology

from anywhere in the world. It leverages all the visual features of both Delta3D and SimCore. The Stealth Viewer has a built in After Action Review system that can record and playback network simulations.

Simulation Core and the Stealth Viewer have been deployed to organizations such as Naval Service Training Command (Great Lakes), Northrop Grumman (Newport News), Joint Forces Command (JFCOM - Suffolk), NAVAIR Manned Flight (Pax River), Doron Precision (Binghamton), and USMC PMTRASYS (Camp Lejeune). As with Delta3D, it is written in C++ and runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. Although Alion is the most prolific outside developer of Delta3D, it is by no means the only one. Recently, Renaissance Sciences Corporation (RSC) has used Delta3D to provide the visualization for several of their products. RSC builds software which computes the interactions between light (both visible and nonvisible) and objects such as terrain and vehicles to predict how scenes will look using various technologies, such as night vision goggles and forward looking infrared. They have created various tools to do this, and rather than licensing a visualization tool, they used Delta3D for their visualization. This has worked out very well for the company, and the results are impressive, as shown in figures 3 and 4.

Additionally, we have long wanted to improve Delta3D’s Simulation, Training and Game Editor (STAGE) by modifying its architecture to be plug-in oriented, but were unable to because this was a large task and we did not have a project that required this. However, recently a Delta3D user unassociated with a specific company submitted code that did just this. This change allows developers to modify STAGE easily to meet their needs, either for internal development or for their customers. The MOVES Institute has used this capability to build a port protection application for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Maritime Training Division. Figure 5 shows the version of STAGE that comes with Delta3D, while figure 6 shows how it was modified to let FLETC personnel use it to build port facilities for training.

The Future Delta3D’s future is very bright. Lockheed Martin’s Simulation, Training and Support branch is currently using Delta3D 24

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Fig. 3

Figure 3 - Image of physically based NVG created by RSC and displayed in Delta3D. Figure 4 - Image of a hazy sunset, created by RSC and displayed in Delta3D from a physically based model.

Image credit (3&4): Renaissance Sciences Corporation.

Figure 5 - Delta3D version of STAGE. Figure 6 - Modified version of STAGE for FLETC Port Protection Application.

Image credit (5&6): NPS MOVES.

ments. We expect that a coalition of companies and organizations using Delta3D will be the outcome of these discussions, but nothing has been finalized. Anyone interested in having a voice in this should see the website for more information.

Fig. 4

Conclusion

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

as the basis of their SAGE project. The company and NPS have recently agreed on a CRADA that will allow the MOVES Institute and LM-STS to work closely in the future development of the engine and jointly solve problems. This has worked well in the past with smaller companies, and we expect it will also work well with a company of L-M’s size.

Similarly, as Delta3D continues to expand its user base, it becomes clear that the informal method of interaction between the Delta3D team at MOVES and the users must become more formal.

Although we don’t know the final form that will take, we will be conducting virtual discussions on the Delta3D web site (http://delta3d.org) and will have a meeting at I/ITSEC 2009 to finalize the arrange-

We originally developed Delta3D to be a commodity solution, essentially an alternative to high priced software tools when the added functionality they provided wasn’t worth their cost. However, Delta3D has matured to a level where it is no longer just a commodity solution.

Dr. Talib Hussain, Senior Scientist at BBN Technologies said: “The open-source Delta3D engine enabled us to achieve our goals on the ONR-sponsored VESSEL (Virtual Environments for Ship and Shore Experiential Learning) program by allowing us to quickly and efficiently add the instructional features we needed to support our game-based training product.”

As is common for open source projects, users first came to Delta3D for the low cost, but have become part of the community because of what it offers. As these users improve the engine, more users will discover it meets their needs, the engine will continue to improve, and the cycle will continue. ms&t References • Guerrero, M., & Darken, C. (2008).

Blended Inverse Kinematics: Delta3D System Utilization. Presented at I/ITSEC 2008, Orlando, Fl. • McDowell, P., Darken, R., Johnson, E., & Sullivan, J. (2005). Delta3D: A Complete Open Source Game and Simulation Engine for Building Military Training Systems. Proceedings of I/ITSEC 2005, Orlando, Fl.

About the Author Perry L. McDowell is the Executive Director of the Delta3D game engine at the Naval Postgraduate School.

3

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f Over 130 Technical Sessions and Tutorials f 450,000 sq ft exhibit hall showcasing all the latest training technologies f Network with over 16,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors f Meet with Key Government and Industry Leaders and DecisionMakers, including DoD, DHS & OSD Exhibit/Sponsorship Questions: Debbie Dyson ddyson@ndia.org 703-247-9480 Conference Questions: Barbara McDaniel bmcdaniel@ndia.org 703-247-2569

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National Focus

Helicopters become increasingly involved in the fight against global piracy.

Image credit: Walter Ullrich.

Rotary Wing Tour de France During a two and a half day press tour organised by the French Armament Agency DGA and the supporting industry, the French Armed Forces demonstrated their rotary wing capabilities – both materiel and level of training. Walter F Ullrich reports.

T

he French Armed Forces have a remarkable range of helicopters at their disposal, in terms of both diversity and quantity.

The rotary aircraft flown by the Army, Air Force, Navy and the Gendarmerie meet the needs of service-specific operations, as do the equipment, weaponry and training. Missions encompass the full operational range from public rescue services, to special operations and to combat missions.

French Helicopter Power – An Overview The French Army Light Aviation (ALAT) is the aviation service of the French Army. For combat missions, ALAT has 201 Aérospatiale Gazelles and an increasing number of EC 665 Tigers - currently 12, with deliveries for a total of 80 underway. Ninety-four SA 330 Pumas in multiple versions serve as their utility and assault helicopter. The successor to the Puma is the multi-role AS 532 Cougars, of which there are 18 units. Offshoots of the Puma are the eight EC 725 Caracals, which are currently deployed in Afghani26

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

stan. Eighteen AS 555 Fennecs ensure low-cost training for the French Armed Forces’ helicopter pilots. Within the scope of the public-private partnership DCI, the majority state-owned specialist for military technical assistance, and the Spanish Proteus Hélicoptères created Helidax, a company that will provide 30 EC 120 Colibries for up to 22,000 helicopter flight hours for the Army’s light aviation school in Dax, southern France within the framework of a contract covering a period of 22 years.

The Naval Air Arm (ALAVIA) has two categories of helicopters in its inventory: ship-borne helicopters and public service helicopters. Sixteen EC AS565 Panthers and 26 WG Lynxes contribute to antiship warfare; three EC Dauphin Pedro helicopters are used for search and rescue (SAR) missions, while 27 Alouette IIIs take up support and training missions.

The six Dauphin SPs and eight SuperFrelons serve as public service helicopters, and specialise in SAR for individuals off French coasts. Twenty-seven NH90 NFHs (NATO Frigate Helicopters) have been ordered to equip the existing and

upcoming French frigates, and to replace the Super-Frelons.

The French Air Force (ALA) has 86 helicopters integrated into the Airlift and Support Brigade. The 42 Fennecs, also marketed as Ecureuil or Twin Squirrels, serve many purposes, including the interception of small aircraft. The 28 Pumas and seven Super-Pumas are tasked with rescue missions on land and at sea and specialise in combat SAR. Three multirole AS 532 A2 Cougars and six of the even more ambitious EC 725 Caracals are used for missions in complex tactical and aeronautical contexts.

The Gendarmerie National has 26 Ecureuils and 15 light utility helicopters Eurocopter EC 145s, which will be complemented by 12 lightweight, multi-task EC135s by the end of 2010. The main mission of this military service, which is subordinate to the French Ministry of the Interior, is to keep order and to ensure public safety.

The Paris Cluster Although generally distributed across the whole of the French territory, there is some

regional clustering of helicopter forces.

The Airbase at Villacoublay, south of Paris, is home to GCFAG, the National Gendarmerie’s Central Aviation School; COMALAT the HQ Army Light Aviation; EH 3/67 Parisis, the Paris Air Force Helicopter Squadron and the Joint Helicopter Group GIH, a mixed unit of Army and Air Force helicopters providing air transport for special forces. COS, the HQ of the French Special Operations, is also based there.

The bundling of high-quality training establishments and special operation commands in the proximity of the capital is deliberate, as it permits immediate and well-coordinated actions. The EC 145 and EC 135 helicopters of the Gendarmerie are well suited for patrolling, intervention and investigation, as well as for the transport and delivery of special units.

The aircrews regularly train with RAID, the special police forces, and GIGN, the French Gendarmerie’s elite counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit for special operations at home and abroad. Special missions training include arresting armed criminals, in particular those who have taken hostages, counter-terrorism, dealing with aeroplane hijacking, and the prevention of prison mutinies.

Air Force helicopters are part of the French Air Defence Network. Long

Multinational Gap 09

Sharpshooters from air commando units are tasked to neutralize threats emanating from ultra-light and light aircraft.

Image credit: Walter Ullrich.

before 9/11, France had set up MASA, the French acronym for Active Means of Air Security. In summer 1988, a mischievous pilot dubbed the “Black Baron” conducted some reckless fly-pasts over night-time Paris in a small aeroplane.

He was never caught. Although he did not cause any real damage, the episode triggered the establishment of a helicopter interceptor force to provide security against potential threats from ultra-light and light aircraft. The Air

A multinational helicopter exercise conducted by the European Defence Agency and hosted by France took place earlier this year in Gap (French Alps). “Gap 09” brought together aircraft and crews from Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary and Spain, as well as personnel from nine other EU Member States.

The aim of “Gap 09” was to develop interoperability through mutual understanding. As it was the first exercise of its type, lessons learned from the exercise will be important, in particular to assess how such exercises can be organised in the future.

The number of participating helicopters was limited to ensure optimum results and to facilitate responsive exercise organisation in regard to logistics. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy encouraged the exercise in 2008 to underline the need to improve the availability of helicopters for crisis management operations.

Simulation Technology Feature Writer MS&T Magazine seeks a writer with a simulation and training background capable of accepting six to ten assignments throughout the editorial year. The ideal candidate will have ten plus years of simulation and training industry background, acquired through positions which may include simulation engineering, program management, training operations or marketing.

Candidates must be comfortable working virtually, and should have a personal contact database covering simulation vendors, training providers and military operators. Knowledge of publishing is a definite asset, as is an objective writing style.

Some domestic and international travel may be required.

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The focus of visual simulation is shifting – to the warfighter’s helmet.

Rick Adams looks increasing emphasis at the on sensor fidelity and some of the technologies that are enabling amazing advances in training quality.

the Cg Factors

Training Technology

training Technology

monitoring the critical 505th command and control Wing latencies of the Quoth the raven, joined virtually from motion and visual Field, Florida. “We’re hurlburt systems. A significant like the man behind “More robotics” the curtain in the 3D cAD Finite element difference between ard of oz,” said one ‘Wizexercise controller. the two will not only Analysis can spot stresses and potential cause negative training, A Tom Clancy-branded The 505th “flew” weak points in the all virtual blue force the disconnect commercial and red force aircraft simulator structure. could induce pilot utilizing the US-only video game that can be purchased sickness.

Air Warfare Simulation on (AWSIM). For “beans, Image credit: opinicus bombs, and bullets” the Internet for US latencies, or $10 provided sufficorporation. (logistics and support more specifically, tasking orders), they throughput delay used the coalition-friendly cient capability for – the time between analysts from the lockheed Martin US a Theater Battle Manpilot’s control input agement core System Army Research laboratory and when it’s felt (TBMcS).

(ARl), Alion in the simulator movement Science & Technology, Meantime, the Marines or viewed on the SA Technoloand soldiers assaulted out-the-window which resembles system, motion system gies, and two universities the UoTF, or sensor scene an urban town with and control loadto determine – were a city center, complex upwards of 150-250 housing buildings, ing system, a FlightSafety the value of teaming a school, hospital, milliseconds prior unmanned vehiInternational and other facilities. to the Air Force c-130 cameras and other Vital 10 image generator cles with dismounted Using upgrades. Some studsensors embedded soldiers and in urban Rockwell rescue by cubic throughout ies show a simulation UoTF, observer monitored collins/SeoS lcoS missions. the projectors. throughput delay group and individual of 150 msec is acceptable; exercise review. actions for postA switch from cRTs clancy’s Rainbow “It’s important for Six 3: Raven to much lighter other research a unit to know their recommends 100. and weaknesses, liquid crystal on Shield served duty strengths Takats indicates silicon (lcoS) or what works and as a battlefield simuthey’d what doesn’t. This dig- lator for like to optimize allows units to enhance ital light processor Mountain Village a series facility of “Blackhawk Down” those down to (DlP) projectors realism the abilities of their about can style rescue tactics, equipment, 50-70 milliseconds. and leaders,” explains represent a significant low density visual MetaVR’s Afghan missions. Raven village. scenes may yield “The customer has colonel Ashley gunder, weight difference Above Shield inadseen tremendous Australian Army commander of the – lowering the simulator’s lets the game player equate training Image credit: MetaVR. combat Training environments for improvement in lead a group of center of gravDistributed mission center. some the product. It’s very ity, moving the cg “elite international missions, according operations at RAF This month, for the subtle, but the general forward or backward, Waddington. counter terrorists” to MetaVR president first time, networks Image credit: QinetiQ. and simulators from reaction is that the non-US countries and changing “the equipped with garth Smith. They’ve (Australia, canada, high-tech gear sim feels better.” inertia of the moving recently produced and and the UK) will be a into a Virtual Flag mass,” according high-power firearms, database of an urban new simulator in latency takes three plugged to Takats. exercise. The scenario development by according to game area south of Kabul separate paths – eSg will be a simulated motion system, visual Afghan wargame developer Ubi Soft. with about 500 buildings Above (elektroniksystem opinicus conducts – a blend of low-intensity und logistik gmbh, system, and instruat the distributed various analyses in a 2 square mission operations conflict (requested ment panel simulation by the Aussies and – structural, weight, kilometer area so MÄK’s flagship product Munich) to screen A primary finding, center at Kirtland the Iowa Air national finite element – and canadians) and notes Alion’s lead helicopter pilot canVR-Forces. new Mexico; US or stimulation.

AFB, major combat operations AWAcS crews will When the pilot moves (requested by the creates a 3D cAD human factors engineer guard can train Image credit: MÄK didates. The FPS-h combined forces British). participate from model of the simulator Technologies. the yoke or stick, AFB, oklahoma.

(FliegerpsycholoPatty McDerinvolvTinker as the case may structures to determine ing high-speed aircraft, mott, was that soldiers left gisches System – A global network be, the signal is hubschrauber) simulawill allow the UK unmanned aerial were detected what will hap“We never have enough sent Royal Air Force to the simulator’s simulated Typhoon pen when the weights vehicles, ground vehicles, “significantly less Screen shot from tor will feature concurrent’s live coalition training, to fly Ubi Soft’s Raven Shield. aerodynamic model often” when they fighters and Tornado change. “We don’t we are going to war,” and joint termiand that’s how linux-based fighter-bombers notes USAF Major for position, velocity, Waddington) alongside believe ‘when in nal attack controllers were aided by an Image credit: Ubi Imagen visual hardware (in Soft/Army Research doubt, make it stout,’” Michele Boyko, exercise unmanned aerial (JTAcs). and director. “If we don’t virtual Royal Australian acceleration and Diamond lab. changes. or learn it here, then fighters (Williamtown Takats notes. “We ground vehicle.

Visonics’ genesisIg Air Force F-18 “To do really effective every subsystem where?” believe in using design “scenery on the and canberra), canadian (For more on Talisman training, you the signal Two cgs – center-of-gravit fly” passes through fighters (Shirley’s tools which are very have to train together. software. “The luftwaffe Forces cF-18 Rescue teams performed Saber and the Shoalwater for processing adds Bay), and American accurate if you know And when you’re http://www.halldale.c wants to be sure y motion forces and their misfacility, erated to B1 and B2 bombers om/MST_DigitalIssue the latency. But F-15 and F-16 fighters. how to use them.” trying to cross-reference sion faster and they are getting through a single computer-genvisual and sensor and were not detected the motion/visual API, unifies DDS the right candidates,” s.aspx - scroll down British crews will to MS&T 5/2006) in urban setimagery – are both synas [Datachronization man e-3 AWAcS tings, often says Distribution one when you Ken thing have Jackson, teamed gets sims realistic cues to pilots, critical to delivering they particularly Service] and hlA to be very precise.” the most attention. with a UgV robot.

VP development An Air Force Modeling look for however, standand ship commanders, are stresses and special systems for ards.”

“The motion system Smith says some and Simulation participants preferred potential weak points concurrent. urban databases and ground vehicle (AFMSTT), developed Training Toolkit drivers. Rick is pretty fast, the in Adams looks at a very high frequency, as the simulator use “tend to be simplistic. flexibility and “big by prime contractor Imagen’s largest Bihrle, which specializes MÄK Technologies shifts and strains. picture” of having about 5 to 10 millifew recent developments Accenture for the enhancing USAF electronic order to date, 32 It’s marketing comin wind After the UAV Systems center, seconds” (less than analyzing one device, targets. A lot of databases easy to find servers, is from tunnel testing, has munications director, training capabilities. that are overhead. is being upgraded hyundai Rotem a single frame in they found a minor recently been modhandle homeland Michelene St. make the terso it can for a 60 the defense scenarios hz crack rain K-series Tank Platoon eling the effects Amand, says their visual refresh), Takats Advantages were flat because it’s easier in the sim frame such as establishing of ice buildup. perceived for havVR-exchange is zones to deal with within inches of says. “The visual Simulators to be to simulate. But no-fly They ais always the potential terrorist where the test that’s not realistic ing the information used by the South designed a simulated “universal translator” long pole in the threats or disasters. identified the highest for close air support.”

Korean Army. hyundai manager (the permodernization will which allows users scale model with tent,” The The follow guidelines control inputs must stress point. “nothing Training warfighters son monitoring the Rotem developed “ice shapes,” then “to move beyond f you’re going of the navy/Air Force be routed through the K1/K1A1 main unmanned vehicle) worked with nASA’s just integrating in an environment serious, still within to throw some work enterprise Services the netbatnet-Ig and its graphics safety margins,” Takats Martin for a very “that accurately co-located with tle tanks and family glenn Research work standards” Infrastructure (neSI), weight around, the rescuers, represents mountainous processors, where demanding customer, center to instrument to interoperability commented. “But centric applications of ground combat especially the an outline for netone ofof the tradeoffs a designed to overcome it validated our analysis.” the US Air Force regions with small face-to-face communication. enabling vehicles. each tank de havilland Twin hlA RTIs, federation 30-40,000 pounds is how much content population centers legacy stovepipe Special operations simulator includes otter for real-world tems and incorporate object models, and of an aircraft But this the sys- weapon is 8 user wants to see more Service oriented Forces. AFSoc’s critical.” MetaVR’s was skewed by channels running data collection. “The other standards.

The motion system systems trainer, the fact that remotely in the scene. “Do two c-130h simulaAfghan village is Presagis’ Vega Prime Architecture (SoA) components. biggest effect was may also need you set want to see blades to be tweaked to pretty precise understanding you need a tors, an Ac-130U within mountains transmitted images visualization software. buildup on the and complex terrain of grass moving in gunship WST, and suit special training horizontal tail,” “often confused For example, AWSIM of how that the says of a wash from propellers? parameters. For mass in motion Mc-130P are all varying elevation the rescuers because Wachter. “This puts Lots of COTS did not have the Jackson claims evolving to what and cave networks. example, a flat moves around the granularity necessary they didn’t have a great deal of presA lot of building Imagen’s strength to model individual Takats buffet good a six commercial aircraft, detail? It takes more effect may be too degree of freedom calls a “level D-plus” derives from concurrent’s sure on the control In the synthetic environment, The new Afghan reference point for violent if the simulator envelope. essential for developwheel.” processing power. standard, and will ing an application the image.” database also “hard real or contentAdd that simulates flight weight has been be evaluated on a “matches the actual time” legacy as creation space, “The key isn’t just scene content, increase The inexpensive A “defect” in the radically reduced. patterns at Washington, recurring basis by a simulator host cAe-owned Presagis footprint of specific game required Dc’s Ronald Reagan high level Archithe weight. It’s latency.” govcomnational and Dulles more the center ernment “SIMcert” structures.” The some workarounds puter developer. tecture (hlA) has steadily bought From the Ig, urban area is part “our Ig is not spending of gravity,” says distributed simulation specialists, primarily the signal travels airports for a desired to make the test airspace-clearing up several leadChAngIng ThE Jim of exercise. The north through the projector.

Takats, president ex-FAA simulator geospecific terrain Losing Weight scenarios viable. time on operating specification can ing commercial wAy yoU vIEw of opinicus. “you inspectors. covering 9,600 square And Raven Shield American Aerospace system latency. In SIMULATIon off-the-shelf (coTS) lead to bottlenecks “We can’t control Defense command need that needs “to learn how the latency in the to understand the kilometers. The terrain WSTs can literally was not designed magic moment when when interoperability software companies Some simulator to handle an emergency to collect the type projector. It depends inertia and the forces drop upwards of upgrades, whether you hit the joystick, that requires the and now markets is also delivered is required The most advanced a ton data needed, of coordination of everyone on what you buy.” out at the extremes, military or civil, with correlated or more when changing you want to see what’s between simulation a “common work simulation and training so researchers had semi-automated Takats says says are motion-focused: from the President flow” package under such as a rejected systems from differthe United States happening on the to system in the world. to take projection some forces of takeoff scenario.” to a pilot in an F-16. commercial projectors replacing an analog (SAF) databases. projectors. each calligraphic lightweight detailed notes and screen. you don’t ent providers, according the brand name The Christie Matrix There’s no other watch videotapes want the oS taking cabinet and circuit Aeria. The flow StIM™ is the first replicate that other can be around to provide simultaneous to José María cRT projecway of to for a than 40-50 msec, while boards with a new tor in a 5-channel the experiment. McDermott, ‘housecleaning’ break.” lópez, business developing a simulation through simulation,” opinicus, which Databases for high-flying and independent some that are tailored system can weigh digital system, which development director prides itself as “an both the visible and control over says David Votipka of Accenture/gestalt. who is also terrain, build-for fighter air500 program IR spectrum using engineering company runs from a touch-screen craft “used to be pounds or more, at Spain’s nextel ings, vehicles, and simulation or other concurrent also manager of ARl’s LED illumination. or 2500 total. The The first to enable less dense” because Aerospace Defense which does manucomputer-generated offers tools for finecustom solutions eventually the AFMSTT Pc and can Advanced lcoS Decision real-time balancing offer as low as 4-8 facturing,” cut its provide data recording, high detail was projectors only tip tuning Ig performance. and Safety. “Different forces (cgF) would may be able to and optimization Architectures of color, brightness teeth on motion control not required. But msec. the scales around start with the Terdaily commercial model the 30,000 weight-and-bal“We work with RTI [run time collaboraand black levels on now 50 tive Technology air traffic flights and control loading ance testing, smoothness with very high-resolution pounds each for nvidia and ATI to infrastructure] software raVista tool from The visual path a frame-by-frame basis. The first nationwide, as well Alliance, systems, the typically proprietary make interplay with military former testing are designed for simulation says sure sensor represented lags not Terrex, their drivAlion’s systems human-Systems … “and as their today compat20-30 pods, addmsec behind you don’t have to even fast movers with night vision flights – even distinguishing ers are working ible with each other.

3D structures (including and training with solid state LED by their Realcue the motion path.

Integration organizadrag around strip need to be able to their best on goggle (nVg) capaAlso, the complete that has been hijacked illumination and RealFeel building interian airliner products. human chart see factors specialists recorders and plug-in the scene at the building bility or as little tion (the acquired by terrorists. tem with no cross-interrupts our syssimulator can be ors for dismounted for a virtually maintenance-free with no consumables, But they’ve quietly as 14 pounds per suggest a throughMicro Analysis and training) and vehicles hlA-compliant leads.” level. “The high Fort harrison in developed system. to slow lamp Design) but put delay difference Montana, whose a reputation for performing flyer needs to see for commercial off things down,” not its subsystems; using creator from But more common, has been evaluating rugged hills somewhat what the ground Jackson explains.”And the shelf Sony or of 30 msec (about the former Multigentherefore, you only resemble the Afghan as is the case major surgery alternavehiJVc tives such 2 visual frames and on service-life extension with the AFSoc cle driver sees,” models. Modifying terrain, incorporates we can put trace can reuse them at Paradigm, add as epic games’ Unreal a 60 hz system) Smith adds. “They Mc-130P for Kirtland weather patterns the projector platform points on the renderthe system level.” a national guard urban training village platforms.

Touris not all anda problem which cubic is equipping AFB, new Mexico, have to see the same atop the simulator nament, which “provide ing software to cgF with Stage The lutz, Florida-based nextel’s proposed for pilots. If the visual know how much (from engenuity), a motion upgrade cab may shed more database.” ble command center, more flexibility “open architecwith a deployafirm is curchristiedigital.com/simr cannot injectkeep pace, time is gPS-enabled tracking rently handling major coupled with a new weight. “cRTs require in authoring environments.” it’s spending.” The ture” solution is AI Implant’s artificial evolution Takats says the latency a real-time networking systems, and mobile visual system. The tools will also higha fairly rigid strucWST motion and communications intelligence and in the equipment. The motion system can Kirtland program ture to support their Doing Hard real light page faults, middleware product, crowd behaviors, I-hITS (Initial homestation other upgrades on behalf of be increased. includes changes “and we can show heavy weights. We’ll then deliver a visual ncWare, “based time Instrumentation lockheed to the on Training System) the cockpit, instructor actually remove a The german Air operator how to the publish/subscribe rendering of the includes software lock it down in memory lot of this extra super- 08 MS&T Force plans to use scenario with another 18 MS&T station, aural cue jurisdiction situational paradigm which, for multi- 16 MS&T MAGAZINE • MS&T MAGAZINE MAGAZINE • ISSUE MAGAZINE • ISSUE a structure,” Takats awareness so State • ISSUE 4/2009 so it never happens Multigen product, ISSUE 3/2009 3/2009 3/2009 explains.

Vega Prime. and Federal agencies again.” ms&t

training Technology

Training Technology

Interested candidates should contact: Chris Lehman, Editor in Chief, MS&T Magazine.

Email: chris@halldale.com

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MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

27

National Focus

Force uses AS 355 Fennec helicopters for these rapid reaction missions, which are distinguished by manoeuvrability, speed, endurance and a rapid deployment capability. The MASA Fennecs are equipped to intercept aircraft by day and night and have the means to even communicate with aircraft with no radio. A team of two sharpshooters from air commando units is tasked with neutralising or ensuring control over the target. One of those nations to have adopted the MASA model is the United States, which is using MH-65 Dolphins to protect the National Capital Region from light aircraft terrorist attacks.

Cote d’Azur Region The Hyères Naval Airbase in southeastern France is a hub for helicopters, with three helicopter squadrons fitted with WG Lynx, Alouette III, Dauphin SP and EC AS565 Panther; two public service detachments with Super-Frelon and Dauphin SP; two C.E.P.A. (French Naval Aviation Test Centre) with Alouette III, WG-13 Lynx, and, once it is available, the new NH90 NFH; the C.E.I. (Training and Instruction Centre), which has various flight simulators at its disposal, is also stationed at the Hyères base.

The French Navy uses helicopters for traditional missions such as anti-surface warfare, naval force support, and SAR. More and more often, however, the naval helicopter force is tasked with surface searches in the context of anti-illicit fishing, anti-pollution, anti-narcotics trafficking and anti-piracy. Helicopters have become crucial in the fight against global piracy, especially when it comes to identifying the small motorboats used by pirates. France has successfully carried out several rescue operations in which French citizens were released by marine commandos.

About 35 km as the crow flies to the northeast of Hyères in Le Luc / Le Cannet lies another heavyweight helicopter hub: the Army School General Lejay (BEGL) Airbase. The French Army Light Aviation has 400 helicopters and aircraft, which account for almost 70% of the French fleet of military helicopters. As the biggest operator of helicopters in France, ALAT is recognised as the reference for all forces in terms of helicopter operations. Le Luc is the main base of EAALAT, the Army Light Aviation Training School, a centre of excellence open to military helicopter pilots from other services and allies.

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The multi-purpose EC-725 Caracal fulfills combat SAR requirements in urbanized areas.

Image credit: Walter Ullrich.

EAALAT operates approximately 90 helicopters; 1400 personnel are directly or indirectly involved in training tasks, using modern, highly efficient teaching resources and systems, including a substantial part of simulation training. The school holds the ISO 9001 certification and delivers pilot certificates based on the applicable European standards.

The base is also home to the FrancoGerman School EFA, which was created in 2003. EFA is a truly unique model for European defence: German and French crews are trained to use the EC 665 Tiger weapon systems, sharing resources, defining joint training concepts and harmonising training. As the first unit to operate the Tiger, EFA is a test bed for the two nations’ army aviation. The school will be able to train up to 40 crew members per nation per year when fully operational.

Eighteen German and French instructors, eight French Tiger HAPs and five German Tiger KHS are readily available for training. Sixty-five per cent of the training is covered by simulation, both full mission simulators and cockpit procedure trainers.

Aquitaine Region 600 km west of Le Luc, close to the town of Cazaux in southwestern France, on the Atlantic Coast is the “Commandant Marzac” Air Base 120. The base is home to the 1/67 “Pyrénées” helicopter squadron, the French Air Force’s only combat SAR unit. Its peacetime mission is SAR, public service missions such as medical evacuation, protection of events, disaster relief and instruction. The squadron’s crisis time missions cover special opera-

tions, maritime counter-terrorism and combat SAR. The “Pyrénées” squadron is a joint unit, which is combat proven in operations in, among others, Iraq (Desert Storm), Kosovo, Congo, Lebanon and Afghanistan. It is equipped with up to seven SA 330 Pumas and, from 2006, with an increasing number of EC 725 Caracals. The six cutting-edge Caracals the squadron currently has at its disposal have not only significantly improved the unit’s combat value but also facilitated maintenance. The Automated Flight Computer System (AFCS) design also helps to get more efficient and proficient pilots in a shorter space of time: the initial 90 flight hours to combat SAR qualification has been reduced to 60!

Cazaux is also home to one of the three DGA Flight Test Centres (CEV). The centres operate both on-ground and in-flight test and simulation facilities all at the forefront of technical excellence: ground targets, flying test benches (fixed and rotary wing), tracking facilities, cameras, infrared and electromagnetic signature measurement, electronic warfare ground stations, firing range and instrumented air drop zone, flight recorder analysis. The Tiger helicopter is one of the major programmes managed by CEV. The Cazaux test base specialises in flight tests for airborne weapons, rescue safety equipment and airborne systems. The Istres test base focuses on aircraft and integrated weapons systems, and has simulation capabilities, while the Toulouse test base concentrates on testing parachuting, air transport and air drops. CEV has its own test and acceptance flight crew school (EPNER). This school accepts numerous French and foreign trainees from the public and private sector.

The two-and-a-half day information tour provided deep insights into France’s military rotary landscape. Of course, it was set up first and foremost to support the French helicopter complex. DGA’s industrial partners for the press trip were:DCI, Eurocopter, Lacroix, MBDA, Sagem, Thales, and Turbomeca. But this was promotion at its best, not least because not only industry and government officials were there to comment on the equipment; end users, pilots, gunners and members of the Special Forces all shared their experiences and lunch with 36 specialist journalists, giving uncensored and candid answers to the sometimes pushy questions. ms&t

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Show Report

Left & opposite page The AUVSI conference in Washington, DC featured more than 300 exhibitors.

Image credit: AUVSI.

AUVSI Automation, modularity, standardization and network capabilities are defining future unmanned vehicle systems.

Christopher Prawdzik reports.

B

illed as the “largest unmanned systems symposium and exhibition since 1973” the 2009 Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference Aug. 10-13 in Washington, DC, featured more than 300 exhibitors covering more than 230,000 square feet, 75 media outlets and 112 speakers.

There was a theme that proved to be common. Jim Carter is director of business development for Proxy Aviation Systems. His explanation of Proxy’s multiaircraft control system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, a universal distributive management system that can coordinate up to 12 UAVs at a time, illustrates that theme.

“It’s a high level of scalable autonomy, so each aircraft has a virtual pilot onboard, and they have very detailed mission plans,” he said. “The mission plan not only tells [operators and the UAVs] what they’re going to do, but by constantly exchanging information, they can cooperate as they go.”

This includes collision avoidance, terrain avoidance and higher-level tasks like buddy lasing for a weapons system.

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Echoing one of the cornerstones of the conference, he described how the system “runs the gamut of autonomy,” and the same exact software used for controlling the UAVs on a live mission is also a simulator.

“It’s a … simulator; it’s a mission recorder; it’s a mission planner—the mission planning piece we’re building now—but it’s modules that plug right into this system,” he said.

This common theme flowed back and forth from AUVSI conference attendees and speakers to those developing and producing the technology and equipment that will take the joint environment into its next iteration.

Dennis Majkowski, president of AUVSI’s Board of Directors, said in the opening session, “if you’re not here, you’re going to miss where the future is going.”

He backed that up noting that the Air Force this year trained more unmanned system operators than pilots. But it’s not just the Air Force. The joint environment continues to rely on unmanned systems for more missions.

“The bottom line to all that is we are the group … that provide[s] the impetus

for all these systems,” he said. “We provide the technology. … But the important perspective is that the government, the Defense Department and other agencies of the government as well as commercial industry are using unmanned systems.”

Minutes later, Maj. Gen. Blair E. Hanssen, director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for the U.S. Air Force described how four specific components are driving the future Air Force and the entire joint UAV environment - automation, modularity, standardization and network capabilities.

“When you think about eliminating the man in the loop … what you’re doing is you’re freeing up a lot more space on those systems in order to extend your mission and carry out more missions that have the same platform,” he said.

With automation, he said the Air Force is quickly moving toward more autonomous capabilities. With modularity, “plug and play” capability—not unlike Proxy’s UAV aircraft control system—provides flexibility that the services need. With standardization, these pieces can work together to create the larger technological environment and then finally the network capability is key not only to gather data, but also to do something with the data.

“Frankly, amateur hour is in the collection business. The professionals are spending time putting the data together and make[ing] it meaningful, real-time,” Hanssen said. “What’s happened in the technological realm that’s enabled both capability and threat in this IT revolution is a focus and a shift now upon information centricities as the nature of the world and the nature of what we are doing in the military.”

Uri Bornstein, a consultant for UAV programs for Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., discussed IAI’s focus on mission planning and mission commanders and operators that reflected Hanssen’s lead. For the first time, IAI exhibited its unmanned aerial system solutions that included a ground control station, “command and control system for multi-sensor operations,” known as TWISTER and a UAV mission trainer.

“Our system is focused on sensor

training,” he said. “This is the main purpose of the system, and we cover all the major sensors [that are] now being actually integrated and used on UAV platforms... actually any unmanned vehicle system.”

IAI’s focus is an extremely wide swath of situational awareness for the battlefield. “Our entire system is integrated into a single laptop; it’s portable; you can take it with you to the battlefield,” Bornstein said. “Since this is so compact and so simple, our system is extremely cost effective.”

He emphasized that the UAV is not an entity in itself. It must be integrated into the entire area of operations, which includes everything from UAVs to manned aircraft, and these vehicles must communicate to coordinate effectiveness, ensuring the proper tool follows the proper target.

“You will need to communicate vertically and horizontally,” he said. “You will need to give the operator a situational awareness picture.”

Another exhibitor, L-3 Link Simulation & Training, featured its Blue Box HD system, which provides virtual training for a variety of platforms. The system

integrates real-time technology that gives operators a real view of the battlefield while incorporating simulated scenarios within the same framework.

The result for operators is a 360-degree battlefield view that is virtually no different from simulation to mission rehearsal or mission execution.

According to a release by L-3, “The physics-based content includes models for air and ground vehicles; weapons and threats; populations; man-made structures; and a full range of weather conditions.”

“Use of Blue Box HD to securely distribute in real time a full range of HD World simulation technologies is blurring the lines between training, mission rehearsal and actual operational exercises,” said L-3 Link president, Bob Birmingham. “In providing augmented reality to actual mission exercises, unmanned aircrews now will be able to detect, track, suppress and destroy targets across a 360 degree field-of-view.”

A commonality among most of the exhibitors and definitely the push behind conference organizers is a move toward seamless transition and execution from training and simulation to live battlefield operations. And it’s something to which the U.S. military is paying strict attention, as manufacturers race to develop technologies and equipment that can quickly address future military needs and their challenges.

The next AUVSI symposium and exhibition is scheduled from Jan. 31 to Feb. 1, 2010, in Singapore. The 2010 North American show is Aug. 24-27, 2010, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. For complete information on AUVSI, visit www.AUVSI.org. ms&t

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Seen&Heard Edited by Lori Ponoroff.

For daily breaking S&T news - go to www.halldale.com.

Left An Italian Air Force AMX aircraft during Green Flag, a realistic close air support training exercise for airmen and soldiers.

Image credit: USAF/Michael Holzworth.

US ARMY AND AIR FORCE INTEGRATE TRAINING WITH ITALIAN AIR FORCE Italian warfighters participated in joint manoeuvres with the U.S. Army and Air Force for the first time at the National Training Center (CTC) at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and the Air Force’s Green Flag West (GFW) at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Italy provided 10 AMX/A-1 close air support (CAS) aircraft, 34 pilots, six joint terminal attack controllers, and a variety of support personnel.

Members of U.S. Joint Forces Command’s (USJFCOM) Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team (JFIIT) helped integrate the training exercise which included the use of MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial systems (UAS). JFIIT assisted the integration of a variety of joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets between the Army’s 2nd Brigade 32

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Combat Team (BCT), 3rd Infantry Division, and aerial assets from both nations.

that puts naval trainees into an environment that simulates a naval vessel on fire. The company will also provide maintenance and operation of Battle Stations 21, a high-tech simulator that puts naval trainees into a variety of highly realistic battle settings (see MS&T 6-2007). Completion of training on Battle Stations 21 marks a recruit’s final step in boot camp.

In addition to high-tech simulators, the contract also calls for Fidelity to prepare sites and position gear for training sessions and to maintain Technical Training Equipment, items such as radar systems and navigation devices that trainees need to use at sea.

FIDELITY WINS $20 MILLION NAVY CONTRACT

NEW VISUAL THEATRE SYSTEM FOR ROTORCRAFT FLIGHT SIMULATION LAB

Fidelity Technologies Corp. (Fidelity) won a $20 million, five-year contract with the U.S. Navy to provide maintenance and operational support at the Training Support Center (TSC) and Recruit Training Command (RTC) at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, Illinois.

The Contractor Operation and Maintenance Services (COMS) contract calls for Fidelity to provide all labor and materials needed to maintain the training systems at both training centers. Fidelity will operate and maintain a number of simulation training systems including a three-story fire fighter training facility

Display Solutions, Inc. upgraded The Boeing Company’s Philadelphia Rotorcraft Flight Simulation Laboratory in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania with a visual system theatre featuring an ORION Projector.

The Rotorcraft Flight Simulation Laboratory is a test and evaluation facility that requires multi-channel projected images to be compatible with ANVIS III NVG and rotation rates of 50 degrees per second without smear and visual system design and components have to be re-configurable in order to display the extreme maneuvers associated with rotorcraft development.

The ORION Projector with both the ORION Green Option for NVG and the ORION Red Option for rapid moving images without smear was the key component of the design, which also included a low-latency video processor from 3d-Perceptions. The theater design also fits with the existing CH-47 Chinook cab and mounting gantry’s, the 220 degrees HFOV by 90 degrees VFOV spherical screen and provides chin window images.

CUBIC COMBAT TRAINING TECHNOLOGY NOW USED FOR PRECISION BOMB TESTING Cubic Defense Applications Inc. has a new application for its airborne instrumentation pods used during air combat training and a new contract to furnish GPS-based airborne pods to The Boeing Company for use in flight-testing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits.

The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit is used to convert unguided free-fall bombs into precision guided “smart” weapons and Boeing has several international customers purchasing its JDAM equipment, so it needs a deployable test and evaluation tool. Cubic will develop an independent Time Space Position Information (TSPI) system as a truth source for fighter test aircraft. The TSPI system will initially be used in JDAM/aircraft integration efforts on the Republic of Korea Air Force’s KF-16 and the Royal Saudi Air Force’s F-15S, as well as other international JDAM integration programs. Cubic will adapt its current-generation airborne instrumentation pods for the TSPI system and add capability to its ground system hardware and software.

INTEGRATED HMI AND DIGITAL MAP SOFTWARE Presagis and General Dynamics UK are partnering to integrate two products that will help systems integrators create advanced embedded display applications that incorporate digital maps.

Integrating Presagis’ VAPS XT, software for rapid development of dynamic and interactive real-tm.e graphical human machine interfaces (HMI), with General Dynamics UK’s digital mapping solution, SoftMap, lets developers create complex tactical display applications and deliver better situational awareness on the ground, at sea or in the air.

VAPS XT integrates with SoftMap through a VAPS XT 2-D moving map object and allows developers to render a map on screen. Users can create object overlays on top of the map, including symbology, buttons and menus. Touch-screen capability can also be added for additional interactivity. This integration can be used in complex simulation applications or deployed as a part of embedded systems such as airborne systems that require safety-critical certification in compliance with standards like DO-178B.

ROTOR-LIFT BUYS TWO FLYIT SIMULATORS Rotor-LiftT Aviation has purchased two helicopter flight simulators from FLYIT Simulators for use in helicopter training and re-currency requirements. One of the simulators is a Professional Helicopter Simulator model with six flight model capabilities.

The other is a custom model AS355 Twin Star (also known as a Twin Squirrel) with a full function Auto Pilot and dual Garmin 430W’s. The lower cost flight simulators are installed in a mobile self contained trailer/classroom.

25 Years of MS&T From Star Struck to Star Trek... from Ranges and Pyrotechnics to Virtual Worlds This fall sees the 25th anniversary of the launch of Military Simulation & Training magazine, now MS&T, by then publisher Manfred Sadlowski of Moench Verlag. At the time S&T was a ‘gleam in the eye’ of most major defense suppliers and this represented a visionary move for any publisher. For most of those 25 years I have been intimately involved with the magazine and with the S&T community. It has always been an interesting ride and for the past 5 or so years it has become a wild ride as massively improved computing power at last allowed us to do what could only be dreamed of in 1983/4.

I won’t dwell on history, though I am particularly proud that we have weathered 25 years of continuous and accelerating change and that we remain the first, and still the leading, title dealing with this fundamental, core, enabling, set of skills and technologies that we term the S&T industry.

When Halldale gained control of MS&T at the end of 1999 the magazine was focused on simulation technology.

That focus was immediately changed to explaining the use of those technologies for training purposes. Technology itself is not the problem; we can rely on it moving forward (see page 18). As consumers of the technology we do not have to understand too much about ‘how it does what it does’ just ‘what it allows us to do’.

The ‘human in the loop’ provides the real challenge, and how we get him or her sufficiently up to speed to handle the weapon system or platform that they operate. That is the challenge. In many areas of operation, certainly in other high technology training sectors, individual error is usually a causal factor in ‘mission failure’.

Getting that ‘error rate’ down to the lowest level possible is our mission. Perhaps our biggest challenge is to adapt our training to teach the new generation of school leavers to succeed when we, the 35 +’s and they, the under 25’s, approach learning in radically different ways (see Editorial Comment page 5).

Here is to the next 25 years!

Yours Sincerely, Andy Smith

•

Publisher, MS&T Magazine

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SAIC WINS $22 MILLION U.S. MARINE CORPS CONTRACT Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) won a contract and initial delivery order to be the program support integrator for the U.S. Marine Corps Counter Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device Electronic Warfare (CREW) program. The contract has a five-year ordering period with a total ceiling value of more than $120 million. The initial delivery order has a one year base period of performance and a total value of more than $22 million. Work will be performed as required throughout the U.S., Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.CREW systems are vehicle-mounted, multiband radio frequency jammers designed to block enemy use of select radio frequencies and prevent the remote detonation of land mines. This capability is needed to protect maneuver elements and entry control points from radio controlled improvised explosive devices. SAIC will support CREW systems in areas including installation, logistics and maintenance.

COUNTER-PIRACY TRAINING The Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre (MMWC) is providing counter-piracy training and operational support to help members adopt a coordinated, structured and sustainable approach to mitigate the financial, operational and human impact of piracy. It offers a comprehensive package designed to prepare for pirate attacks through certificated training, risk assessment, auditing and 24 hours - 365 days a year operational support, which includes counter-piracy intelligence and threat analysis.

The newly established UK based and non-profit organization is staffed by experienced maritime security specialists. It provides land-based management teams – those that deal with pirates should an event occur – with extensive training at the world-class MMWC training centre. The course gives shore-based managers a full understanding of what operating crews will go through in highrisk areas. A fully immersive simulator shows what happens in the event of a pirate attack. Other classroom sessions describe the role and scope of military involvement, crisis management plans in the event of a successful attack, legal overviews, media and brand protection and ways to empower crews to ensure safe transits of high-risk areas.

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The Weapon System Trainer (WST) for the C-130 AMP .

Image credit: Boeing/Ryan Denny.

BOEING DELIVERS FIRST C-130 AMP TRAINER TO U.S. AIR FORCE Boeing delivered the Air Force’s first simulator, the Weapon System Trainer (WST), for the C-130 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) to Little Rock Air Force Base.

The simulator is a full-motion, high fidelity simulator that uses the same software as the C-130 AMP aircraft, making it easier for the Air Force to keep the simulator current with the aircraft. Future modifications can be made to the aircraft and the training devices at the same time, so aircrews can train on any new capability in the simulator before they fly it in the aircraft.

Boeing is scheduled to deliver a suite of trainers over the next several years to support the AMP training program at Little Rock. Each piece of training equipment offers a different level of instruction to train crewmembers in the operation of the new capability AMP will install in the aircraft.

TRIANGRAPHICS AND VT MÄK PARTNERSHIP VT MÄK (MÄK) and TrianGraphics GmbH signed a partnership agreement where the latest version of TrianGraphics’ Trian3D Builder will support MÄK’s 3D visualization solution, VR-Vantage and MÄK’s computer generated forces

toolkit, VR-Forces. VR-Forces support is provided via Trian3D Builder’s GDB Export module.

“Pairing VR-Vantage and Trian3D Builder saves users from conversion issues and wasting time waiting for slow loading and paging of large databases,” according to Stephan Kussmaul, Managing Director, TrianGraphics GmbH. “This simplified and flexible approach reduces overall costs and saves time, so customers can focus on their job – building simulations.”

PORTICO 1.0 READY FOR DOWNLOAD Portico Project released Portico version 1.0, the free, open source, Run Time Infrastructure (RTI) for the defense and IEEE distributed simulation networking standard High Level Architecture (HLA) 1.3.

The Australian Defence Simulation Office (ADSO) supported development of Portico, especially the final work to achieve version 1.0. That agency has supported Portico development since 2005 in conjunction with its Defence Synthetic Environment in a Box Initiatives. The first public release of Portico was version 0.5 in 2006. Commercial support for Portico includes application consulting and technical support from Calytrix Technologies.

As an open source product with its past development work exposed to the public, release of Portico version 1.0 comes after almost 5,000 downloads of earlier versions that support numerous Portico-based distributed simulation applications in many different organizations worldwide. The rate of Portico

downloads increases each month. More information about Portico, including free download of the software, is available at www.porticoproject.org.

SAAB MODIFIES BT 46 SIMULATORS FOR GERMAN ARMY The German Federal Defence Technology and Procurement Agency for development and serial deliveries contracted Saab to adapt BT46 simulators for the German AGDUS dual-simulation training system. The modified version will be used for the GTK BOXER armoured vehicle, equipped with both the FLW 100 and the 200 remote weapon system application. Delivery of four preserial systems is scheduled for tests and qualification in November 2009, followed by serial deliveries of 127 systems during 2010 and 2011.

The World’s Largest Gathering of Aviation Training Professionals

ECS SELECTED AS A FAST 50 Engineering and Computer Simulations (ECS) was chosen to be in the Washington Technology Magazine Fast 50 list, an award that ranks the 50 fastest growing small businesses in the government market. The rankings were based on compound annual growth rates from 2004 through 2008.

ECS, a software development and solutions company in Orlando, Florida ranked number 14 on the list with a 13 percent growth increase. Washington Technology is a Federal IT market publication.

DEFICIENT FLIGHT TRAINING BLAMED IN RUSSIAN CRASH According to senior Russian military commanders, the collision between two Su-27 fighters in preparation for the MAKS-2009 Air Show revealed problems in flight safety procedures and pilot training.

Preliminary investigations show the accident on the eve of the Moscow Air Show, in which the Commander of the famed “Russian Knights” aerobatics team was killed and two other pilots were injured, was most likely caused by pilot error. “This accident clearly showed that there are still issues that have to be addressed in our flight safety system,” Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Deputy Chief of Russia’s General Staff, told the press. “It turns out that aerobatics pilots are unable to practise flights in group formation on flight simulators,” the General said, adding that the use of flight simulators could significantly reduce the risks of accidents. “We are convinced that the simulators should be built prior to the development of an aircraft.

There will be fewer risks,” he said. Nogovitsyn explained that all Air Force personnel must be trained on flight simulators and other ground training equipment as part of flight training.

According to the General, the Defence Ministry will contract several Russian companies, including the Tupolev aircraft maker, to develop and build advanced flight simulators for the Russian Air Force in the near future. The commander of the Russian Air Force, Col. Gen. Alexander Zelin, had earlier said that in Russia the training of a first-class military pilot takes between seven and eight years and costs US$3.4million on average, and that these figures could almost double in the future. Military pilots should fly 100-120 hours a year on average, he added. However, some experts believe that the average flying time in the Russian Air Force had up until now only been 60-65 hours.

The World Aviation Training Conference & Tradeshow 27-29 April 2010

Rosen Shingle Creek Resort Orlando, Florida

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RHEINMETALL SOLDIER ELECTRONICS Oerlikon Contraves Deutschland GmbH of Stockach, Germany, which has belonged to the Rheinmetall Group since 1999, changed its name to Rheinmetall Soldier Electronics GmbH. Strongly oriented to the needs of dismounted infantry, the company’s product family includes laser-based aiming systems (LLM: laser light modules), fire control units for dismounted soldiers and the DSID (dismounted soldier identification device). It is one of six product-oriented divisions that comprise Rheinmetall AG’s defence technology arm.

L-3 COMPLETES PHASE 1 OF F/A-18C/D SIMULATORS Under the first phase of the five-year program awarded to L-3 Link in 2006, L-3 Link delivered six new F/A-18C/D Tactical Operational Flight Trainers (TOFTs) and upgraded 16 existing U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 simulators to the new F/A-18C/D TOFT configuration.

The new F/A-18C/D TOFTs and upgraded simulators were integrated with new photo texture databases to increase visual acuity, add audio capabilities, increase malfunctions and enhance instructor operator station functionality.

Aircraft concurrency upgrades were also integrated to provide each simulator with the platform’s latest aircraft capabilities.

Phase two of the program calls for delivery of one additional F/A-18C/D TOFT each to Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Iwakuni, Japan; MCAS Miramar, Calif.; and the Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas. Phase two will also focus on ensuring the training devices remain concurrent with the aircraft, developing additional visual system databases, inserting new training technologies and making improvements in aerodynamic fidelity. These updates will be deployed to all F/A-18C/D training devices in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps fleet.

SAIC WINS $49 MILLION TASK ORDER Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) won a task order by the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) - Dahlgren Division to provide systems engineering and analysis support for combat systems. The follow-on task order is for one year, with four one-year options, and will be worth more than $49 36

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F/A-18C/D Tactical Operational Flight Trainer (TOFT) .

Image credit: L-3 Link Simulation & Training.

million if all the options are exercised.

The task order was awarded under the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command SeaPort-e contract and the work will primarily be performed in Dahlgren, VA. NSWC Dahlgren focuses on research, development, test, and evaluation in the fields of military safety testing, integrated warfare systems, weapons and ammunition, sensors and directed energy, and homeland and force (military personnel and equipment) protection. The agency translates the warfighter’s needs into technical solutions within an operational context for the nation by developing and supporting systems, technologies, concepts and tactics that enable military forces to conduct their missions safely and effectively. Under the task order, SAIC will support NSWC Dahlgren’s initiatives by helping introduce new technology into combat systems. SAIC will also provide technical and engineering expertise in support of total ship and combat system engineering, and research and development.

BOEING PROVIDING NETWORK FOR U.S. AIR FORCE C-17 TRAINING The Boeing Company received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to deliver a C-17 Distributed Training Center (DTC) to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. Boeing will provide the ability to network 10 existing C-17 training sites in the United States, using Scott Air Force Base as the hub.

“This capability will allow the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC) to conduct continuation and mission qualification training, execute mission rehearsal operations, develop tactics, and participate in large force exercises in a realistic environment at a fraction of livefly costs and with very little risk,” said Sean Carey, AMC program manager for Distributed Mission Operations (DMO).

Boeing expects to deliver the DTC in January 2012. The 10 training sites will maintain their existing connections to the DMO network, which allows military aircraft training sites around the world to link with one another for large-scale, high fidelity training operations.

The C-17 networking capability in allows C-17 crews to participate in exercises with multiple aircraft platforms.

The C-17-specific DTC will extend current C-17 DMO capabilities, allowing for higher-fidelity aircrew training; it also will provide the airlift community with a continuously available training network capability.

PRESAGIS ACQUIRES SEAWEED SYSTEMS Presagis acquired its long-time partner, Seaweed Systems Inc., maker of embedded graphics solutions for the military and aerospace market and with expertise in the development of safety critical graphic drivers.

Acquiring Seaweed gives Presagis a broader reach into the embedded market with a more complete offering that will include software, drivers, specialized graphic chips, and consulting services.

Presagis will be able to offer a singlevendor solution and support organization

for the procurement and delivery of safety and mission-critical embedded graphics systems.

Combining both companies’ development synergies allows Presagis to develop embedded graphical applications using highly integrated solutions. Moving forward, the combined solution of both VAPS XT and the SeaWind line of OpenGL graphic drivers will deliver major time and cost savings to avionic developers especially when porting and optimizing for specific hardware platforms.

As a result of the acquisition, VAPS XT software and Seaweed graphics drivers will now be jointly developed, tested, and optimized to provide the best possible performance across a wide variety of embedded target platforms. End user HMI and driver development teams will be highly integrated - maximizing their efficiency and speeding delivery of embedded applications to market, which will help minimize customers’ certification and system integration risk when working with two separate suppliers.

NEW TRAINING COURSE FOR ROYAL NAVAL OBSERVERS The Royal Navy has awarded £57M service contract to Ascent, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and VT Group, to develop a new three phase Basic Observer Training course. Royal Navy Observers are key crewmembers in all maritime helicopters.

Phases 1, Introductory Flying Training and Common Core Ground School; and Phase 2, Elementary Navigation Training, will be conducted at RAF Barkston Heath. The flying portions of both will be done on the Grob 115Es, owned by the VT Group. Phase 3, Basic Flying Training, will take place at RNAS Culdrose on four new MOD-owned Beechcraft B350ER King Air aircraft.

The contract includes a sub-contract between Ascent and FR Aviation (part of Cobham plc) to integrate a radar and tactical mission training system into the King Air aircraft and conduct maintenance and continuing airworthiness services.

CAE WINS C$100 MILLION IN MILITARY CONTRACTS CAE won a series of military contracts with prime contractors and other military customers – including Eurocopter, Airbus Military and L-3 Communications – valued at more than C$100 million.

The Eurocopter contract calls for CAE to perform major upgrades on two CAE-built CH-53 full-mission simulators at the German Army Aviation School at Buckeburg. Eurocopter will be upgrading 40 CH-53 helicopters for the German Army with new avionics, communications systems, night vision capabilities, and other new functionalities. CAE will perform the simulator upgrades that will ensure concurrency with the operational helicopters and the training systems. Specifically, CAE will design and manufacture new CH-53 simulator cockpits, add the latest CAE Medallion-6000 image generator, upgrade the instructor operator stations, and perform a range of other enhancements. The CH-53 simulator upgrades for the German Army Aviation School are expected to be complete by the end of 2011.

With the Airbus Military contract, CAE will provide A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) training devices to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF).

CAE will design and manufacture an A330 MRTT part-task trainer and CAE Simfinity(R) integrated procedures trainer for each customer.

Under the L-3 Communications contract CAE will continue providing avionics software upgrades, integrated logistics support and data management services for the Canadian Forces CF-18 aircraft. L-3 MAS has been prime contractor on the CF-18 service and support program since 1986 and CAE has been performing systems engineering support services for the CF-18 fleet for more than twenty years.

AUSTRALIA, CANADA AND U.K. JOIN U.S. IN VIRTUAL WAR EXERCISE Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States participated in Coalition Virtual Flag 09-4, a virtual air war exercise conducted by the USAF 705th Combat Training Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base September 18 -24.

To help forces train together for when they will need to fight together, between 400 and 500 people from the four nations took part in the exercise – many without ever leaving their home country. Virtual Flag is designed to give warfighters the opportunity to train alongside joint and coalition forces in realistic theater-level combat scenarios.

The virtual battle was played on simulators from 25 locations across the globe. All simulators plugged into a single synthetic war environment at the Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC) at Kirtland, which served as a hub for the exercise. It was the first time all coalition forces played on their own simulators from their home bases.

Participants were put in challenging real-world situations where success hinged on effective integration throughout the theater air control system. Everyone from the JTAC on the ground all the way up to the Joint Force Air Component Commander participated.

International Working Group Conference

Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing FSTDs: On the Road to Harmonisation Wednesday 18 – Thursday 19 November 2009 No.4 Hamilton Place, London W1J 7BQ, UK This Flight Simulation Conference will examine and progress the issues raised by the progress in the design, use and accreditation of Flight Simulation Training Devices (FSTDs). The main emphasis will be given to lower order, fixed base devices.

Commercial pressures are ensuring that flight crew training is conducted in the most cost-effective training devices.

Concerns over rotary wing operational safety trends are moving regulators to consider more extensive use of fixed base simulators. This trend is in the civil and military world.

www.aerosociety.com/conference Sponsored by:

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Arrivals & Departures Marc Parent, CAE’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer will become President and CEO of CAE when Robert Brown retires on September 30, 2009. Parent joined CAE in 2005 as Group President, Simulation Products and was promoted to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in November 2008, responsible for all four of CAE’s segments and new growth initiatives.

He also became a member of CAE’s Board of Directors in November 2008.

Brown became President and CEO of CAE in 2004. He will continue as an advisor until the end of December 2009.

French General Stéphane Abrial became NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) on September 9, succeeding U.S. General James Mattis. In his capacity as SACT, General Abrial will lead the transformation of NATO’s military structure, forces, capabilities and doctrine to strengthen the interoperability and deployability of NATO’s multinational forces.

General Abrial takes over just as the NATO Secretary General launched a process aimed at redefining NATO’s Strategic Concept in line with today’s security challenges. General Abrial’s nomination followed France’s decision to retake its place in NATO’s Integrated Military Structure, which was announced at the Strasbourg and Kehl Summit in April of this year.

David Epstein is the new Chief Operating Officer of VT MÄK, a company of VT Systems Inc. Epstein will manage day-to-day operations, oversee infrastructure development and work with senior management to develop company-wide strategic plans.

Epstein is a senior technology executive with experience in taking ideas from conception to deployment. During his twenty-year tenure with IBM’s Software Group and the TJ Watson Research Center, Epstein held several leadership roles, driving strategies and solutions in a number of different industries.

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LATTICE RELEASES XVL WEB MASTER VERSION 8.1 Lattice Technology, Inc. released a new version of its XVL Web Master application that delivers upgraded tools that allow part descriptions to be extracted from the 3D model and displayed in the HTML pages, directly related to the parts number and the 3D part itself. The application also automatically arranges and displays index or part numbers as part of the 3D technical illustration as it processes the 3D data and display process instructions in the HTML page without needing intermediate steps. Users of XVL Web Master 8.1 can also choose additional settings for how animations of the 3D data are displayed including being able to jump to the next animation in a process, play the entire process with the click of a button and automatic display of animation paths for the 3D parts.

MERLIN HELICOPTERS TRAINING FOR AFGHANISTAN The RAF’s Merlin Helicopter Force began a four-month training exercise in the United States as the final stage of preparation for its deployment to Afghanistan at the end of the year. When deployed, the Merlins, from RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, will provide support to ground operations, increasing the UK helicopter lift capacity in Afghanistan 25 percent.

In the MERLIN VORTEX exercise at the US Naval Air Facility El Centro (NAFEC) in San Diego, crews will

Above An RAF Merlin helicopter landing in dusty conditions during Exercise Merlin Vortex at the US Naval Air Facility El Centro,San Diego.

Image credit: Crown Copyright/MOD.

be able to train in conditions similar to those they will face in Afghanistan. With temperatures reaching 50° C and rarely dropping below 35° C at night, trainees will experience flying and landing in hot and dusty conditions. They will also get the necessary experience of completing missions in mountain ranges of varying heights.

NEW DEFENSE ACQUISTION UNIVERSITY LAB IN ORLANDO The Defense Acquisition University is going to co-locate its new Orlando Teaching and Learning Lab with the Joint Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Lab in Central Florida Research Park in Orlando and will partner with the University of Central Florida for joint-use classroom facilities.

“The co-location of DAU’s teaching and learning lab with the Joint ADL facilities provides opportunities for partnering with the Team Orlando industry, government and academia,” said Dan Gardner, Director of Readiness and Training, Policy & Programs; Office of the Secretary of Defense. “The testbed will be instrumental in implementing advanced distributed learning technologies into education and training.”

27-28 October 2009

The first training and simulation event of the Iberian zone Madrid, Spain

IberSim is a new training and simulation networking event that will include: Conference with speakers The conference is free to attend and will include a wide range of themes and open discussions Exhibition The exhibition includes displays of latest products and innovations Training & Simulation Consortium The IberSim training and simulation consortium aims to develop collaboration between Iberian training and simulation players, to share experience and to talk about projects and technologies available in the Iberian zone For more event information and to register please visit www.ibersim.com or email info@ibersim.com

IberSim is a non-profit organisation

www.ibersim.com

(NPO) info@ibersim.com .................................................................................................................................................................

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MAKS 2009 - Russia’s Biennial Aerospace Showcase This year’s Moscow Air Show (MAKS), was held from August 18 to 23 in Zhukovsky, south of Moscow. The organisers from AVIASALON JSC felt the event went much better than expected, given the current economic climate.

MAKS is a very popular event. Poor economic figures did not prevent Russian enthusiasts from visiting the air show: more than half a million visitors came to see the event.

And it was worthwhile coming – not only for locals. Nowhere else can one see more stunning acrobatic flights. And at no other event would one find more evidence of Russia’s current and former airpower bundled together on one airfield.

711 companies from 34 countries, including 436 Russian firms, took part in MAKS. That is almost 100 fewer companies - most of them Russian - than two years ago. So it was all the more surprising that contracts totalling US $10 billion were signed during the air show, a record. Major deals in 2009 included a contract worth about US $2.5 billion between the Russian Defence Ministry and the Sukhoi aircraft maker on the delivery of 48 Su-35S, 12 Su-27SM and four Su-30M2 fighter jets for the Russian Air Force. Apart from that, professional excitement at MAKS 2009 was rather measured.

There was nothing at the show that had not been showcased somewhere else before.

Even Russia’s new shooting star, the Sukhoi Superjet 100, a joint venture between Alenia Aeronautica (51%) and Sukhoi Holding Company (49%), had had its debut two months previously in Le Bourget. Most international exhibitors and - astonishingly enough - many domestic participants as well, still see MAKS as a national showcase that demonstrates Russian aerospace power to Russian citizens. Could one imagine a Western trade fair where for one day normal business comes to an almost complete standstill just because the prime minister is visiting the site? Or that essential information is available only in Russian? Fortunately, a willingness to cooperate and the Russian talent for improvisation largely compensated for the organisational deficits. Although Russian politicians see it differently, MAKS is still far from on par with the Paris or the Farnborough air shows.

Simulators and other training devices have been increasingly integrated into Russia’s civilian and military pilot training. The fatal crash on the eve of the event between two Su-27 fighter jets from the Russian Knights flying team, in which the commander of the aerobatics team was killed, emphasised how important adequate training is. The accident prompted Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Deputy Chief of Russia’s General Staff, to call for more practice time, particularly with flight simulators, which would be a significant step in improving the Russian Air Force’s flight safety regime.

Russian simulator providers, both public and private sector, produce equipment that meets the requirements of many markets. MAKS is most probably the only place where one can find all the equipment and the designers.

CSTS Dinamika is a major Russian flight simulator designer and manufacturer, an affiliate of TsAGI (Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute), Russia’s leader in aeronautical research.

This year, Dinamika’s products were integrated into a display together with its partners CAE, a global player in flight simulation and aircrew training methodology, and the Russian Constanta-Design, which specialises in the development of image-generation software.

TRANSAS/Kronshtadt showcased advanced flight simulators for fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, for example ATR-42 and Boeing-737, and fixed-base full-flight simulators for An-148 aircraft, Akkord-201 multi-purpose aircraft and helicopters of Mi-8 family. One key idea of TRANSAS is to make reconfigurable flight training devices by downloading and starting up training devices for different aircraft on the same hardware platform.

Ilyushin Aviation Complex, one of the leading Russian aircraft producers, showcased the demonstrator for its new IL-112V military transport aircraft, planned to ready in 2012.

In parallel to building the aircraft, the company has started developing a full-flight simulator in-house together with the avionics specialist Kotlin-Novator.

Sukhoi and Alenia Aeronautica revealed details of its SuperJet International’s first Training Centre Organisation. There will be two locations: Venice and Moscow. The first training device – Flight Navigation Procedure Training – has already been installed at the Venice premises and received FTO approval, enabling SuperJet International to carry out MCC (Multi-Crew Coordination), MCCI (Instructors) and TRI/SFI (Instructor Theoretical) courses. – Walter F. Ulrich 40

MS&T MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5/2009

ETC SIMULATION DIVISION WINS ADMS CONTRACTS Environmental Tectonics Corporation’s Simulation Division signed new Advanced Disaster Management Simulator (ADMS) contracts with New York’s Rockland County Public Safety Academy, Hong Kong’s Fire Brigade, and Düsseldorf’s Fire School in Germany. ADMS is a virtual reality simulation training stage that provides a true-to-life experience for first responders to train, assess and exercise Incident Command and vehicle operation. ADMS simulates emergencies, disasters and other events for which live training is not feasible.

ADMS based training allows for a high level of proficiency to be achieved in a relatively short time, is easy to prepare, and is a green solution.

New York’s Rockland County Public Safety Academy, a new ETC customer, is getting an ADMS system to facilitate the training of its first responders. The Academy will use the system to train multiple types of scenarios including road traffic accidents with fires and dangerous spills, multi-story building fires and hazmat incidents. As an allhazards, multi-discipline team training platform, ADMS training is applicable to all types of responders including fire-fighters, police officers, and emergency medical staff.

Hong Kong’s Fire Brigade and Düsseldorf’s Fire School signed new contracts for upgrades to their existing systems. The Hong Kong Fire Brigade is adding additional vehicle resources to its scenarios and The Düsseldorf Fire School purchased an upgrade that will allow users to practice and simulate positive pressure ventilation tactics.

METRIX WINS £31 MILLION DOD CONTRACT Metrix, a QinetiQ and Sodexo joint venture, won a £31 million contract by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), as part of the Defence Training Review (DTR) Package 1 PFI Project to provide improvements to the UK Armed Forces’ technical trade training. The project’s goal is to transform the way the MOD delivers specialist engineering, communications and information systems training on a Defence-wide basis.

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18-20 May 2010 ExCeL London, UK www.itec.co.uk

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ITEC RETURNS TO LONDON FOR 2010 Europe’s premier event dedicated to defence training, education and simulation •

The UK is Europe’s leading centre for synthetic training

•

London is one of ITEC’s most popular venues, drawing some of our largest attendance figures.

•

London ExCeL is a world class conference and exhibition centre

Don’t miss this opportunity to network and exchange ideas in a world class business environment.

Remember to put these dates in your diary 18 – 20 May 2010 To contact the ITEC team: T: Int +44 (0) 20 7370 8528 / US +1 203 275 8014

E: team@itec.co.uk

W: www.itec.co.uk

National Training & Simulation Association, U

Supported by

Organised by

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CHRISTIE LED PROJECTION ENGINE

KONGSBERG DELIVERS PROTEUS ASTT TO ROMANIA

Christie will present at IBC 2009 the world’s first LED-based SXGA+ and WUXGA resolution projection display system, purpose built for control room and videowall applications. The new Christie Entero™ LED is a LED-illuminated, 1-chip DLP® product line that features a “zero maintenance” design.

The LEDs are rated at 60,000 hours– almost seven years of dependable operation. With no consumable components such as lamps, filters or colour wheels to replace, the Christie Entero LED delivers the ultimate in uninterrupted, 24/7 performance for exceptional reliability and low cost of ownership.

Since LEDs retain their colour spectral characteristics longer, images remain vivid and sharp through years of operation. LEDs also provide more accurate colour matching and a wider range of brightness control and adjustments. In addition, the red, green and blue LEDs can be sequenced at higher rates than those of a mechanical colour wheel, keeping any visible artifacts to a minimum.

With 600 ANSI lumens of brightness, the Christie Entero LED projection engine is capable of illuminating Christie’s 50”, 67” and 72” display cube platforms. In addition, these cube platforms feature superior cross prism optical screen technology for higher brightness and wider angles of view. Sealed optics eliminate the need for dust filters, while innovative “heat pipe” cooling technology minimises audible noise.

Kongsberg Defence Systems Simulation & Training delivered a PROTEUS Action Speed Tactical Trainer (ASTT) to the Romanian Navy in Constanta. The delivery took seven months to complete – including pilot plant delivery, development, production, final installation and system test.

With the ASTT trainer the Romanian Navy can practice Tactical Combat Management Crew for frigates, helicopters and anti-submarine warfare, and interaction between the different units. PROTEUS is currently being used by Norway, Sweden, Romania and UAE. ms&t

FIDELITY REFURBISHES NAVAIR FLIGHT SIMULATION MOTION SYSTEM Fidelity completely refurbished the 2F141, MH-53E helicopter flight simulator motion system at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Va, before the six-week deadline. The simulator is used primarily for Airborne Mine Counter-Measures and vertical shipboard delivery and assault support missions.

Two subcontractors – Servo Kinetics, Inc. (SKI) and Binghamton Simulator Company (BSC) – worked with Fidelity on the project. SKI refurbished the motion actuators and mounting components and BSC managed the removal, shipping and reinstallation of the actuators and mounting systems and performed hydraulic system hose replacement, maintenance and the final acceptance tests for the Navy.

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Index of Ads ADTS 2010 www.adts.aero

16

Boeing www.boeing.com

11

CAE www.cae.com

OBC

Display Solutions www.displaysolution.com

15

ETSA www.etsaweb.org

31

IberSim 2009 www.ibersim.com

39

I/ITSEC 2009 www.iitsec.org

25

Industrial Smoke & Mirrors www.industrialsmokeandmirrors.com 29

ITEC 2010 www.itec.co.uk

41

Kongsberg Aerospace & Defence 19 www.kongsberg.com KMW – Krauss-Maffei Wegmann www.kmwsim.com 20 & 21 Presagis www.presagis.com

4

Raytheon www.raytheon.com IFC RGB Spectrum www.rgb.com

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Calendar 10-11 November 2009 EATS 2009 - European Airline Training Symposium Clarion Congress Hotel Prague, Czech Republic www.halldale.com/EATS 3-4 March 2010 ADTS 2010 – Aerospace & Defence Training Show Dubai, United Arab Emirates www.adts.aero 27-29 April 2010 WATS 2010 – World Aviation Training Conference & Tradeshow Rosen Shingle Creek Resort Orlando, Florida, USA www.halldale.com/WATS 27 – 28 October 2009 IberSim Madrid, Spain www.ibersim.com 15 – 19 November 2009 Dubai Airshow Airport Expo, Dubai, UAE www.dubaiairshow.aero 18 – 19 November 2009 Flight Simulation Group Conference – Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing FSTDs RAeS, London, UK www.raes.org.uk 30 November – 3 December 2009 I/ITSEC – Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference Orlando, Florida, USA www.iitsec.org

RAeS Flight Training www.aerosociety.com/conference 37 SAAB www.saabgroup.com

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SAIC www.saic.com IBC Selex Systems Integration www.selex-si-uk.com VBS2 www.vbs2.com WATS 2010 www.halldale.com/wats

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Advertising contacts Business Manager: Jeremy Humphreys [t] +44 (0)1252 532009 [e] jeremy@halldale.com Business Manager, North America: Mary Bellini Brown [t] +1 703 421 3709 [e] mary@halldale.com

Direct Fire Readiness Solutions We integrate a leading marksmanship training device with experienced gunnery experts to provide an innovative and effective solution to operationally focused weapons training.

Integrating these capabilities to prepare the warfighter is just one of our many missions.

We’re Science Applications International Corporation − 45,000 smart, dedicated people, delivering cutting-edge solutions to respond to your training challenges. Smart people solving hard problems.

Stop by the SAIC booth #2639 at AUSA Annual 2009 to see this solution in action.

To learn more, visit us at www.saic.com/natsec/training/directfire

Energy | Environment | National Security | Health | Critical Infrastructure © 2009 Science Applications International Corporation. All rights reserved. SAIC and the SAIC logo are registered trademarks of Science Applications International Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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