The upgrade program for Tiger combat helicopter aircrew training facilities, awarded to Thales and Rheinmetall Electronics at the end of 2014 by the Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR), has been successfully completed. With the completion of this program, French and German forces are now able to train their crew members in a state-of-the-art virtual environment that ensures full mission readiness and strengthens flight safety.
The first step saw the delivery of two new simulators for the French 1st Helicopter Regiment in Phalsbourg within a record 10 month timeframe to fill a missing training capability. This was followed by the renovation of all 20 interoperable TATM (Tiger Aircrew Training Means) simulators, based in the Ecole Franco-Allemande in Le Luc*, the German regiment in Fritzlar and the two French regiments in Pau and Phalsbourg.
With this upgrade program, avionics, sensors, armament and visionic of the simulators have been updated to meet to the latest German (UHT Step 2 Krypto) and French (HAD Block 2) Tiger standards. Furthermore, the renovation of the training environment includes new instruction station capabilities, the improvement of the display system, and the integration of the latest Thales visual and Computer Generated Forces software. As part of this program, new visual databases were delivered to provide the highest immersive environment to the trainees and support the deployment of Tiger crews in foreign theatres of operation.
The completion of the upgrade process was reached with the binational joint exercise at the École Franco-Allemande, involving six simulated helicopters within twelve networked simulators.Today, the cooperation between Thales and Rheinmetall Electronics continues with the ongoing support of the 20 upgraded Tiger simulators.
Bertrand Cornet, project manager, OCCAR says: The updated system provided by Thales and Rheinmetall offers a full immersive condition. It combines a genuine Tiger cockpit, an accurate aircraft behavior and a tactical environment representative of the operational missions. Eventually, the completely renewed system architecture paves the way to future aircraft evolutions.