CAE Australia has been awarded a contract by the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) to develop a C-130J Hercules fuselage cargo compartment trainer for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
The trainer, which is due to be delivered to RAAF Base Richmond in 2018, will be used to provide high-fidelity training to loadmasters, CAE announced on April 6.
CAE will act as the prime contractor responsible for the overall design, development and delivery, and will be leveraging the design and simulation software already developed for a trainer for the CC-130J Hercules delivered to Canada.
“The new fuselage trainer marks the first time that our C-130J loadmaster workforce will have a dedicated training device that accurately reflects the configuration of this aircraft,” said Air Commodore Richard Lennon, Commander of the RAAF’s Air Mobility Group, in a statement. “The C-130J fuselage trainer will complement our C-130J full-mission flight simulator and other training devices, providing our C-130J workforce with immersive, full-crew mission training in a virtual environment.”
CAE will oversee a team of subcontractors that includes Lockheed Martin and Airbus Defence and Space that will have responsibility for hardware modifications to a former RAAF C-130H Hercules fuselage, which is set to provide the physical platform for the new trainer.
