Defence

CAE to develop NTC for UAE

Posted 16 June 2016

CAE has been awarded contracts by the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces, including one to design and develop a comprehensive purpose-built Naval Training Centre (NTC) for the UAE Navy, featuring integrated ship simulation-based training suites and maritime aircraft sensor stations, that will be used to deliver training for individuals, command teams and whole ship crews.

Above: An United Arab Emirates (UAE) Navy AS332B Super Puma lands on the flight deck aboard USS Constellation (CV 64) to refuel.
Courtesy US Navy / Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Daniel J. McLain

In addition, the overall naval training system for the UAE Navy is being designed for networking and interoperability to enable distributed multi-platform and joint mission training.

With potential phases, the UAE NTC program could be worth approximately C$450 million over the next 15 years.

CAE has established CAE Maritime Middle East LLC to serve as the prime contractor and programme management company in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

CAE will be supported on the programme by Babcock International, one of the United Kingdom's leading engineering support organizations, as well as other local UAE companies.

"This is a major strategic win for CAE and clearly demonstrates our capabilities to serve as a training systems integrator across all defence domains," said Gene Colabatistto, CAE's Group President, Defence & Security. "The UAE Navy selected CAE as its training partner because of our focus and expertise in training, and the result will be a comprehensive naval training enterprise that helps the UAE Navy achieve a high level of fleet operational readiness."

The UAE NTC will include whole ship simulation suites for the bridge, combat information centre (CIC), and machinery control room (MCR). CAE's naval tactical mission trainers (TMTs) will be provided and can be reconfigured for a variety of vessel types and used to deliver individual training across a range of ship systems and subsystems, including Combat Management Systems, sensor, and weapons systems.

The naval tactical mission trainers will be networked and used as part of a whole ship configuration for team and multi-ship training. CAE will also provide airborne tactical mission trainers to represent both fixed-wing and rotary-wing maritime aircraft that can be included as part of joint and collective mission training exercises.

The UAE NTC will feature a tactical control centre that will be used to coordinate and conduct comprehensive joint training and mission rehearsal exercises. The training facility will include all the requisite functionality and capability to perform naval exercise planning, execution, analysis, debrief, and evaluation. The whole ship simulation suites of various vessels combined with a high-fidelity synthetic environment based on the Common Database (CDB) will also enable development and evaluation of naval tactics, procedures and doctrine.

The UAE Naval Training Centre will be located in Taweelah with connectivity to several other naval and air bases throughout the UAE. The UAE NTC is expected to be complete and ready-for-training by early 2019.