Cubic Defense Applications is to develop the next generation of instrumented air-combat training system for the US military. Cubic, teamed with IDT Metric Systems, beat a Boeing/BVR Systems team to win the 10-year, $525 million contract to deliver the P5 combat training system (P5CTS) for 27 US Air Force, Air National Guard, Navy and Marine Corps training ranges in the USA, Europe and the Pacific.
The P5CTS will be capable of both rangeless and fixed-range training, and will enable the US Navy to conduct instrumented training from aircraft carriers at sea for the first time, says Philip Fisch, Cubic's director business development, training systems. Metric will provide three different types of airborne instrumentation: the traditional pod that fits on to an AIM-9 missile launch rail, internal systems for the Boeing AV-8B and F/A-18, and rack-mounted systems for bombers, transports and helicopters.
Five different types of ground display and debriefing station will be provided, ranging from laptops to the high-end fixed-range systems, all built on Cubic's PC-based ICADS individual combat aircrew display system already in use in the UK and the Nether-lands. It will be upgraded with multilevel security, says Fisch. The US forces plan to buy at least 1,000 airborne systems and 150 ground stations, he adds.
Multilevel security will allow the USA to perform air-combat training with coalition partners while keeping certain debriefing data classified, says Fisch. Under the spiral development plan, the capability to encrypt the datalink will be added later, allowing classified data such as AIM-120 AMRAAM missile performance to be transmitted in real time, rather than recorded for post-flight analysis. A programmable datalink is also planned for a later spiral, allowing the P5CTS to interoperate with older instrumentation systems.
Source: Flight International
