MoD invests £4m to enhance military training
Published 26th June 2014
SEA will deliver £4m MoD research programme.
The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has appointed SEA, a subsidiary of the independent technology group Cohort plc, to deliver a £4million research programme as part of the Synthetic Environments Tower of Excellence (SE Tower).
The research programme will focus on future training and experimentation environments, with the aim of developing, evaluating and enabling the exploitation of advanced Live, Virtual and Constructive simulation architectures, interoperability and management techniques. This will aid integration between land, sea and air operations, and support greater interoperability between NATO nations and other coalition partners.
The SEA-led team will investigate innovative ways to integrate and deliver live and virtual simulations for training and experimentation environments more effectively and efficiently, exploiting increasingly-realistic lower-cost synthetic environments where appropriate. The research will focus on the development and evaluation of advanced open, agile and standards-based approaches, achieving more flexible through-life solutions and facilitating collaboration in integrated operations.
The Architectures, Interoperability and Management of Simulations (AIMS) programme forms one of the three technical columns of the SE Tower.
SEA will be supported by its partners BAE Systems, Thales UK and QinetiQ, augmented by industry and academia specialists from across the SE Tower. The research programme is being commissioned as part of MOD's efforts to achieve efficiency savings, particularly in the area of military training.
Bharat Patel, Dstl Senior Capability Advisor, says:
"The complexity and uncertainty of future conflicts require greater agility in our forces to prepare and respond accordingly. This research will enable that agility by developing the techniques to underpin integrated simulation environments for achieving high levels of force readiness and contingency planning."
Andrew Thomis, Chief Executive of Cohort, said:
"Defence operations are becoming increasingly integrated, with many now involving joint forces or international collaboration. It is therefore vital that the UK's training and technology infrastructure keeps up with that reality. Through our body of past research, often working with Dstl, SEA has a deep understanding of military environments and future generations of defence technology, which will allow us to expertly support this research programme."