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06 Nov 13. UK Army soldiers to continue training at BATUS. The UK MoD has decided to continue troop training for the foreseeable future at the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS), which is located at the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Suffield near Alberta, Canada. The decision comes after a long and detailed look out for the best location for the UK Army to deliver its future training plan. Dubbed as the UK Army’s largest armoured training facility, BATUS trains a total of five battle groups, each containing approximately 1400 personnel, each year for up to 30 days, since 1972. Canadian defence minister Rob Nicholson said the country is fully supportive of Britain’s decision to remain in Canada. The UK military had considered relocation to a base in Germany due to the expense of training at BATUS, The Canadian Press reported. BATUS commanding officer colonel Jim Landon said the UK defence secretary Philip Hammond has informed Nicholson of the country’s intentions to generate savings in the support costs of running BATUS. BATUS enables all elements of a combined arms battle group, including infantry, armour, artillery, engineers, air defence, logistics and equipment support to conduct realistic live firing training at all levels and also practice sustaining this activity over a long period of time. The facility currently houses more than 1000 vehicles, including Challenger 2 tanks, Warrior infantry fighting vehicles, CVR(T) and bulldog armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs), Trojan armoured vehicle royal engineers (AVRE), Titan armoured vehicle launcher bridge (AVLB), as well as Gazelle helicopters. (Source: army-technology.com)
05 Nov 13. Rockwell Collins unveiled a new simulation and training center of excellence in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, U.K. The company combined its operation located in Horsham, U.K., a facility gained through the acquisition of Evans & Sutherland in 2006, into its Burgess Hill facility, a facility added with the acquisition of SEOS in 2008.
The newly integrated operation will design, develop, manufacture and deliver high-fidelity, high-contrast, display and projector systems for use in highly immersive simulation and training applications for commercial and military aviation, call-for-fires scenarios, unmanned aircraft control and operations, and ground vehicle operations and maintenance. The Burgess Hill operation will also be a focal point for presenting Rockwell Collins’ wide range of simulation and training systems from across the company to its customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EuMEA).
04 Nov 13. Texas A&M University has approved the establishment of a new facility for research and testing of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center (LSUASC), a joint collaboration of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), will provide research, testing and training to support the integration of UAS into civil airspace.The centre will be headquartered in Corpus Christi, and represents the university’s attempt to compete to become one of the six federal UAS testing sites. According to Luis Cifuentes, vice president of research and outreach at Texas A&M, civil applications that could be studied to support Texas’ unique geographic location include homeland security, oil spill surveillance and marine monitoring. The university has a UAS programme and airspace authorized by the FAA to perform UAS operations. (Source: UAS VISION/Aviation Today)
04 Nov 13. Sofradir will transfer its headquarters to Palaiseau on the Plateau de Saclay, a long-established and growing hi-tech center for materials and optics research in the Paris region. The relocation is a result of Sofradir’s need to expand and increase production. It will install the manufacturing and research facilities of three of its infrared technologies under a single roof by spring 2014. Palaiseau is in close proximity to many technolog