"We're aiming to cut by half the time a trainee fast-jet pilot spends in the operational conversion unit," AerMacchi's Pierclaudio Iaia said here yesterday. "Eurofighter flying hours cost around Eur35,000 each - you do the maths."
M-346 chief project engineer Iaia was talking about AerMacchi's target for cost savings resulting from the implementation of embedded tactical simulation in the new advanced trainer. With pilots likely to put in around 100 flying hours in Typhoon OCUs, the potential economies could run to several tens of millions of euros a year if Italy, as looks possible, adopts the M-346.
AerMacchi is developing the simulation in conjunction with systems integrator Galileo Avionica and Israel's BVR Systems, supplier of the Embedded Virtual Avionics (EVA) software system used to simulate weapons, threats and friendly units.
"Flying time en route to the co-operative airspace will be used more productively by the student and the need to interact with expensive real platforms is likely to be significantly reduced," Iaia said.
M-346 chief project engineer Iaia was talking about AerMacchi's target for cost savings resulting from the implementation of embedded tactical simulation in the new advanced trainer. With pilots likely to put in around 100 flying hours in Typhoon OCUs, the potential economies could run to several tens of millions of euros a year if Italy, as looks possible, adopts the M-346.
AerMacchi is developing the simulation in conjunction with systems integrator Galileo Avionica and Israel's BVR Systems, supplier of the Embedded Virtual Avionics (EVA) software system used to simulate weapons, threats and friendly units.
"Flying time en route to the co-operative airspace will be used more productively by the student and the need to interact with expensive real platforms is likely to be significantly reduced," Iaia said.
Source: Flight Daily News
