Matthew Nelson
The Italian directorate of air armaments and airworthiness has approved a CAE-built simulation platform for zero flight time training with the Predator B/MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft and declared the simulator ready for use at Italy's Amendola Air Base.
CAE said Tuesday it developed the Predator Mission Trainer with General Atomics' aeronautical systems business and both companies helped test the system on the Italian air force's Predator RPA to collect the flight data used in the development effort.
Gene Colabatistto, president of CAE's defense and security group, said the company applied its decades of experience building flight simulators for military and commercial aircraft platforms to the trainer platform.
"We believe this Predator Mission Trainer is the first Level D equivalent simulator for an unmanned aircraft," Colabatistto added.
The trainer's physical hardware uses a Block 15 Mobile Ground Control Station from the Italian air force. CAE also integrated a high-fidelity sensor technology, an interactive tactical and synthetic environment and the Open Geospatial Consortium Common Database architecture into the simulator.
