Thales has completed connecting full mission simulators for Tornado GR4 attack aircraft at the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bases in Lossiemouth and Marham.

By connecting the simulators at both stations, Thales has enabled joint training across the bases.

The two full-flight simulators were supplied by Thales under a private financial initiative (PFI) agreement.

It also includes providing engineers, instructors, administration staff, classroom facilities and desktop training systems.

Thales technical and product line management head Amit Talati said: “The two simulators at RAF Lossiemouth are already connected together using local area network, allowing a pilot and his wingman to fly the mission at the same time.

“Thales has taken another step forward by ‘securely’ linking in the simulator at Marham using a Wide Area Classified Network over the commercial leased line, proving its capability in the management of legacy and new architectural design to meet future operational needs. This capability echoes real-life missions, where aircraft working together may be deployed from different airbases.”

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The company is investing in growing the distributed operational training capability of the RAF as the mission environments for the modern armed forces become increasingly complex and data rich.

Since 1999, Thales has supported the RAF with fast-jet training capability at its bases in Lossiemouth and Marham for Tornado GR4.

"The company is investing in growing the distributed operational training capability of the RAF as the mission environments for the modern armed forces become increasingly complex and data rich."

The company also provided engineering support to Typhoon at RAF Coningsby and Lossiemouth.

The Tornado platform is expected to become inoperative in 2019, Thales stated.

To date, Thales flew more than 38,000 simulator sorties, accumulated over 57,000 simulator flying hours and trained more than 600 pilots in support of the RAF.

The company also supported major training exercises, prepared aircrew for deployment and delivered over 75 simulator updates.


Image: A Tornado GR4 with training munitions. Photo: courtesy of SAC Scott Ferguson/MOD.