Brazilian Navy to get S-70B Seahawk helicopter training system

CAE USA has been awarded a contract by the United States Navy under a US foreign military sale (FMS) program to provide the Brazilian Navy with a comprehensive S-70B Seahawk helicopter training system.

The system will be delivered to the São Pedro da Aldeia Naval Air Base near Rio de Janeiro.

As informed, CAE will design and manufacture two S-70B training devices — a fixed-base S-70B operational flight trainer (OFT) to be used for pilot training and an S-70B weapons tactics trainer (WTT) to be used for training rear-crew sensor operators and airborne tactics officers.

The two training devices can operate independently or when networked they create an S-70B Seahawk tactical operational flight trainer (TOFT) that provides a total aircrew mission training system.

“High-fidelity synthetic training is ideal for cost-effective training and preparing aircrews for mission success, and this comprehensive S-70B training solution will help the Brazilian Navy prepare their aircrews to safely accomplish a range of missions,” Ray Duquette, President and General Manager, CAE USA, said.

The S-70B OFT will support training of Brazilian Navy S-70B pilots and co-pilots in normal and emergency procedures as well as a range of mission scenarios. The flight simulator will feature the CAE Medallion-6000 image generator and Open Geospatial Consortium Common Database (OGC CDB) architecture, an international standard for the creation of synthetic environment databases, according to CAE.

The S-70B WTT will replicate the back-end of the S-70B helicopter and be used to support the training of sensor operators and airborne tactics officers. The S-70B WTT will feature detailed simulations of the underwater and atmospheric environment and the aircraft weapons and sensors to prepare crew members for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare missions.

When the S-70B OFT and S-70B WTT are networked to create the S-70B TOFT, the pilot and co-pilot along with the rear crew can interact and interoperate in the training scenario as they would during an actual mission, CAE explained.