Page 67 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2022

NOVEMBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SIMULATION 67
RIGHT: Lockheed Martin’s Business Development Manager Australia/New Zealand Dave Fallon demonstrates the company’s simulation systems to journalists during Land Forces 2022
LEFT: Lockheed Martin has delivered its Advanced Gunnery Training System (AGTS) and Tank Driver Trainer (TDT) to the Australian Army's School of Armour at Puckapunyal
“To do that effectively you have to stop shooting at steel plates or orange and black men on a stick,” he said. “You have to have some serious threat vectors that are not just something to shoot at, but can also stimulate the systems on board the vehicles – you can’t just drive around thinking you’re in a benign environment.”
In April, then-Assistant Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie announced a $17.6 million contract with Newcastle- based Applied Virtual Simulation to provide Army’s Common Simulation Software under Land Simulation Core 2.0.
At the time, Hastie said the new software will be rolled out across Army’s simulation network over the next two years and will include vehicles, such as those being delivered under Land 400, and other weapons platforms, such as the Abrams M1A2 main battle tanks.
A STANDARDS-BASED APPROACH
The key to developing training systems that are ‘plug and play’ – therefore easily upgraded to meet emerging threats and keep abreast of technology - is to design training systems and individual elements that conform to a standard.
“The really important piece in this is standards-based, modular open systems architecture as the core, so nothing is incorporated into the system that doesn’t abide by the standards,” Dave Fallon explained. “And, being open architecture, you can bring elements in and, when they become obsolescent, you can move them out and bring in the next.”
LOCKHEED MARTIN AUSTRALIA