The Netherlands Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in Amsterdam is delaying the official opening of its Fighter Four-Ship networked simulation environment until September. The four-cockpit system, designed to replicate a four-ship of Lockheed Martin F-16 or F-35 fighters, was set up in September 2006 and was to be officially opened around this time.
Instead, it is being shipped to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas, over the next couple of weeks under short notice following a visit to the NLR facility by a Lockheed Martin delegation. In Fort Worth, NLR's Fighter Four-Ship system is to be used through July in expanded manned tactical simulation events for F-35 coalition warfare operational concept research & development, says NLR spokesman Raymond van der Meer. It will join the existing networked simulation environment operated by Lockheed Martin. The Pentagon is trying to get its international project partners to buy some of their aircraft earlier than planned to offset reductions in the U.S.’s own production plans, Aviation Week & Space Technology will report April 2.
Fighter Four-Ship is a research facility that can simulate tactical operations of up to four F-16s or F-35s operating as a team. The rationale behind the system is to be able to study cooperative tactics and the exchange of information between the individual pilots in the flight, particularly in how to deal with time-sensitive targets. The facility is able to simulate complete missions including the planning, briefing and post-flight debriefing and analysis.
The four cockpits each have an ACES-II ejection seat mock-up, flight controls and a touch screen to represent avionics displays and switches. The outside world is presented on three large-screen displays placed in front of each cockpit. In this configuration, each cockpit station requires five commercial-off-the-shelf personal computers to run. The high-fidelity visual system is partly developed by NLR, partly based on shareware using the Open Flight database format, says NLR director Jacco Hoekstra. Targeting pod imagery (required to simulate close air support missions) is also being added to the system as part of an update program.
Computer-generated forces are provided through CAE's Strive software product.
--Joris Janssen Lok
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