CAE announces simulation contracts

CAE has been awarded defence contracts for simulation products and training services worth more than $118.12 million, it announced on 7 July.

The contracts include additional MH-60R training devices for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), two full-mission simulators for an undisclosed customer, and additional UH-72A Lakota flight training devices for the US Army.

The RAN contract will see CAE supply an MH-60R composite maintenance trainer and procure an MH-60R rear crew trainer. The maintenance trainer will be delivered to HMAS Albatross in New South Wales in 2017, with prime contractor CAE USA designing and developing the system. The rear crew trainer will be a commercial-off-the-shelf product from Virtual Simulation Systems, and CAE USA will deliver and install the system at HMAS Albatross.

The maintenance trainer will be a modified MH-60R helicopter for mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems training. It will include instructor-controlled malfunctions for training in aircraft component removal and replacement as well as fault isolation. The rear crew trainer will be a modified aircraft mock-up with a module for hoist operations training and two weapons modules for door gunnery operations training.

The US Army contract will see CAE manufacture the seventh and eighth UH-72A Lakota flight training devices for the army. Both systems will be delivered to Fort Rucker, Alabama in the spring of 2016. They feature an aircraft-specific cockpit and will support rotary wing pilot training by the army.

The UH-72A Lakota flight training devices have a vibration platform and a 70-degree field-of-view display system that uses the CAE Medallion-6000 image generator. They are also fielded with CAE's common database.

Gene Colabatistto, group president, defence and security, CAE, said: 'Our focus on being a training systems integrator has enabled us to make good progress on the implementation of our strategy in the first quarter, which included the competitive win to provide the US Army with long-term fixed-wing training services.

'These additional contracts we are announcing today are all related to the extended use of simulation-based training as part of these programmes, further demonstrating that global defence forces are increasingly adopting synthetic training for more of their training requirements.'

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