Babcock unveils maritime BITE variant at DSEI

Image courtesy Babcock

Unveiled on the first day of DSEI in London, BITE is a data-rich immersive environment which delivers realistic naval exercises onshore. 

It ramps stress and assaults senses of personnel while measuring training performance for reviews – helping soldiers, sailors and aircrew to step into operations already acclimatised to pressure. 
Users enter the deployable unit to take part in exercises while being exposed to operationally realistic effects, including the sound of fighter jets and artillery fire, generated odours, power outages and smoke. 

This planned attack on senses led one British Army warrant officer to describe the command bunker variant as being “as close as you’re going to get to the real thing” – with this latest evolution of BITE leveraging Babcock’s pan-domain expertise, to solve training challenges for all areas of defence. 

To demonstrate its adaptability and in response to evolving requirements, Babcock presented BITE as a Ships Control Centre on the first day of DSEI to showcase how it can support with training sailors who assess crews for operational readiness. 

As users deal with a crisis ‘on board’ the ship, the trainee trainers are assessed for how they monitor the responses of those involved. 

This ‘train the trainer’ approach provides navies around the world with a mobile and deployable module which allows effective, easily repeatable training while reducing the requirement for exercises to take place at sea. 

BITE can be configured for a range of naval challenges depending on the customer’s requirements – and visitors to DSEI will also be able to experience BITE operating as a command bunker for Army-based operations. 

Jo Rayson, Managing Director for Babcock’s Training business, said: “Navies need realistic and representative training which prepares teams for operations, while using innovative technology to help free up platforms.

“We’ve shown how BITE can transform soldier training – and thanks to the technology and adaptability, we can reconfigure it for a variety of scenarios across land, sea and air. In this case, we’ve turned it into a Ships Control Centre where exercises can quickly and efficiently be repeated time and again without the need for actual platforms.

“This evolution of BITE helps takes naval training away from active platforms at a time of increased operational demand, driven in-part by growing global geopolitical instability.”

Babcock will also be showcasing its land scenarios at DSEI later this week – with the immersive training product forming one part of its complete training solution.