The defense segment of Cubic Corporation has received a contract to supply indoor and outdoor combat training instrumentation for Australia's new Urban Operations Training Facility (UOTF) planned for the Shoalwater Bay Training Area.

The flexible, expandable instrumentation is a key component of the larger training initiative, the Joint Combined Training Capability, which will bring together Australia and U.S. forces for live, virtual and constructive training exercises.

The capabilities Cubic will be providing for the urban facility will include player tracking, video recording, audio and visual effects, centralized exercise control, virtual weapon effects and the capability to conduct multimedia after-action reviews. The system will be interoperable with the U.S. Initial Homestation Training System (I-HITS) and Australia's LAND-134 Combat Training Capability for infantry and armor forces, allowing soldiers participating in training exercises to move seamlessly from an open terrain training range through an urban environment.

The urban environment of the UOTF includes a number of city precincts (commercial, retail, residential, shanty, rubble) constructed from both standard buildings and container based structures. Australian contractor Royal Wolf is providing the UOTF container-based structures.

Cubic's indoor/outdoor instrumentation is the ideal training tool for training tasks ranging from routine collective training to joint training, mission rehearsal and special operations.

Plans are for new urban training instrumentation to be installed in the first quarter of 2007, in time for the Talisman Sabre 07 Australia-U.S. binational training exercise. Soldiers will wear either LAND 134 or U.S. I-HITS radio/GPS player instrumentation as they navigate the UOTF buildings, structures and tunnels. Relay radio stations will provide real time communications to those soldiers throughout the village. IR (Infra-Red) Trackers will "mark" individual players with unique location ID codes as they move through doors, halls and tunnels. In addition, the IR Tracker passes collateral threat from direct fire and/or IED simulators to the occupants of a building.

Cubic's GPS, IR Trackers and video cameras will capture the soldiers' movements in both the outdoor and urban/indoor terrain.

Weapon engagements, including shooting through walls, provide the engagement data to Cubic's exercise control (EXCON) subsystem for a comprehensive display of all training actions, indoors and outdoors.

Each analyst workstation will be equipped with a Cubic PC-based Range Instrumentation System (PC-RIS) display, allowing 2D and 3D views of player locations within their surroundings. The soldier in the field will see and hear smoke, artillery fire, shouting and other visual and sound effects controlled by an analyst operator.

The first major milestone in the UOTF project will take place the first quarter of 2007, after Royal Wolf installs and Cubic instruments the containers in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area for the Talisman Sabre 07 exercise.

The UOTF is a critical element of the JCTC capabilities being demonstrated during the TS'07 exercise. The UOTF, integrated with LAND-134 CTC, I-HITS and ultimately the Air Combat Manoeuvring Instrumentation (ACMI) system, which provides for air-ground weapons scoring capabilities, demonstrates Cubic's unique position in the area of live Joint Combined Training.

New Contract Is Part of U.S.-Australia Joint Combined Training Capability Effort

Sergyi Way
27.02.2007

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