BAE Systems brings gaming tech and F1 to new training and development centre

The £2.3m Training and Simulation Integration Facility at Warton in Lancashire, which incorporates some of the latest gaming technologies plus advanced military aircraft simulators, has been developed in collaboration with Williams Advanced Engineering.

The centre contains simulation capabilities for a variety of different aircraft types, including BAE Systems’ Hawk, Typhoon and future concept aircraft.

Augmented reality and advanced simulation technologies, known as synthetics, can create environments close enough to the real thing as to allow them to be used to offset some of the very high costs of flying aircraft, according to Mark Bowman, director of flight operations at BAE Systems Warton.

The technology will allow the company to place pilots and engineers into representative environments and scenarios that would be extremely costly to create physically, he said.

“So, for example, if you wanted to conduct a complex mission involving air, land and sea, getting all of those assets into one place at the same time would be very costly and difficult to organise,” he said. “But through synthetics you can put the operator into a scenario to maximise their training, without those burdens.”