Collective Simulations for Improved Flight Training

A new research project of the European Defence Agency (EDA), for which the Agency Steering Board has just given its go-ahead, will help participating Member States’ Armed Forces to step up their collaborative air training & exercise capabilities thanks to improved modelling and simulation.

The overarching aim of the project called MAJES (Modelling and simulation as a service applications for Air and Joint Exercises & Simulation) is to develop an interconnected and interacting system/network that will enable the military of participating Member States to perform training simulations for coalition operations in a distributed manner from different locations. This creates much more realistic conditions than in the past, when simulations were traditionally configured and performed on site, in isolation, which meant they were mostly unable to take into account external factors and changes and requested participating Member States to meet physically in specific training centres.

MAJES will thus help Member States in the preparation, execution and after-service of collective (but not physically joint) military trainings and exercises for air and joint operations using LVC (Live-Virtual-Constructive) technologies which supposes a mix of physical and simulated assets, including virtual adversaries. This will support the management and control of digital distributed defence laboratories (Battlelabs) for the concept, development and testing of System of Systems (such as the next 5th generation aircraft systems - FCAS) supporting experiment plan and data farming automation. The project also aims to improve the data collection from exercises for Artificial Intelligence learning in this distributed simulated environment which allows cooperation without joint physical presence.

The project will run over 36 months, starting from the signing of the project contract expected to take place early next year. Three countries are participating so far: France, the Netherlands and Norway (which is not an EDA Member State but has concluded an Administrative Agreement with the Agency). Industry from the participating countries is also involved.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) is an intergovernmental agency of the Council of the European Union. EDA’s mission is to support the Member States and the European Council in their effort to improve European defence capabilities. The head of the EDA is Josep Borrell, a former Spanish Foreign Minister.