SAFIR project supports joint Anglo-French exercise and mission rehearsal

• Exer­cise FLANDRES — first joint exer­cise between UK and French armies after the announce­ment of CJEF.
• CASSIDIAN’s sim­u­la­tion exper­tise used to sup­port the operation
• Sim­u­la­tion pro­vides rich­er train­ing envi­ron­ment and is cost effective.

13 Sep­tem­ber 2011 – Cassidian’s Sys­tem Design Cen­tre is using its exper­tise in train­ing sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port a joint Anglo-French mil­i­tary exer­cise being run this sum­mer. Exer­cise FLANDRES marks the first time that a joint exer­cise between the UK and French armies has been under­tak­en after the announce­ment of a future Com­mon Joint Expe­di­tionary Force (CJEF).

The exer­cise has a key focus on C2 and com­mu­ni­ca­tions inter­op­er­at­i­b­li­ty at tac­ti­cal lev­el. It is part of the “Sup­port to Anglo-French Inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and Readi­ness Pro­gramme” (SAFIR) spon­sored by DGA and DSTL that has been run­ning for the last three years. 

SAFIR is the first joint UK and French gov­ern­ment project drawn upon the com­bined dis­trib­uted sim­u­la­tion and Com­mand and Con­trol (C2) capa­bil­i­ties of indus­try part­ners from both coun­tries in sup­port of a mil­i­tary exer­cise. The Indus­try SAFIR Team con­sists of Cas­sid­i­an in the UK and France, Thales in the UK and France as well as MBDA in the UK and France. The team has been deployed along­side the mil­i­tary, DGA and DSTL con­tin­gent to demon­strate the ben­e­fits the sim­u­la­tion capa­bil­i­ty can pro­vide. Ben­e­fits include pro­vid­ing a rich­er train­ing envi­ron­ment and also reduc­ing the over­all cost to sup­port cur­rent exercises. 

Along­side this work, the Cas­sid­i­an Sys­tem Design Cen­tre in France will be pro­vid­ing an analy­sis tool called the APLET Course of Action (CoA) that will inter­op­er­ate with the cur­rent FR C2 tac­ti­cal sys­tem. An eval­u­a­tion of the joint exer­cise will be con­duct­ed to estab­lish any lessons to be learnt for both mil­i­tary and the SAFIR team. 

The sim­u­la­tion forms part of a dis­trib­uted syn­thet­ic wrap capa­bil­i­ty where the indus­tri­al part­ners can demon­strate the ben­e­fits of enhanc­ing the live exer­cis­es with ele­ments of con­struc­tive (war-gam­ing) and vir­tu­al (human in the loop) sim­u­la­tions. Tech­ni­cal de-risk­ing of this Anglo-French distributed 

sim­u­la­tion capa­bil­i­ty has been under­tak­en using the UK and FR secure gov­ern­ment net­works to under­stand how they can be used to sup­port future exer­cis­es, mis­sion rehearsal and exper­i­men­ta­tion. Key to sim­u­la­tion and C2 appli­ca­tion inter­op­er­abil­i­ty is the pro­vi­sion of com­mon, cor­re­lat­ed data­bas­es and dig­i­tal map­ping appli­ca­tions which SDC pro­vid­ed to all organisations. 

SDC in the UK has col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with both Cus­tomers and Mil­i­tary End-Users to pro­vide the SAFIR Team with the Area of Oper­a­tions, mod­elled to a very high res­o­lu­tion across the sim­u­la­tion ele­ments. Draw­ing on the rela­tion­ship with Astri­um Geo-Ser­vices, SDC UK sourced the lat­est satel­lite imagery prod­ucts to cre­ate high fideli­ty ter­rain data­bas­es that will be used across the SAFIR sim­u­la­tors and going for­ward, will be used rou­tine­ly in sup­port of Anglo-French mil­i­tary exercises. 

Cas­sid­i­an is also respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the ‘Art of the Pos­si­ble’ demon­stra­tions. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case future mil­i­tary sys­tems such as the Talar­i­on UAV capa­bil­i­ty, Loi­ter­ing Muni­tions (MBDA UK) and Beyond Line of Sight (MBDA FR) weapon capa­bil­i­ties with­in the con­text of the exer­cise FLANDRES sce­nario. A snap­shot will be tak­en of the cur­rent exer­cise sta­tus and then a series of vignettes will be exe­cut­ed to demon­strate to the mil­i­tary audi­ence the oper­a­tional ben­e­fits that these future sys­tems will bring. 

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com)
Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue-added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2010, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.9 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2010, the Group – com­pris­ing Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 45.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 121,000.

CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security 

Con­tacts:
Deb­o­rah Wad­don
Tel.: +44 (0)1 633 715 447
Mob.: +44 79 19 69 64 43
deborah.waddon@cassidian.com

Sean Tre­gonning
Tel.: +44 (0)7796 190 083
sean.tregonning@cassidian.com

Cas­sid­i­an Press cen­tre:
http://www.cassidian.com/cassidian/int/en/press-centre.html