Indra has been awarded the contract for the development and supply of a new FMS (Full Mission Simulator) for the most advanced helicopter of the Armed Forces, the NH90, for the Spanish Air Force, for an amount of 19.2 million Euros. This is the third simulator of these characteristics that the company is developing, intended for the Cuatro Vientos air base in Madrid, on this occasion, and it will join the two already operating at CESIHEL, one of the most advanced helicopter simulation centres in Europe, implemented by Indra for the Spanish Army Airmobile Force at the Agoncillo base (La Rioja). One of the important features of this state-of-the-art NH90 simulator architecture is that it is based on the use of real on-board avionics equipment, which provides the greatest realism during training and ensures that future aircraft evolutions are easily replicable in the FMS.

“Beyond instructing in the proper handling of an aircraft, joint tactical training is becoming increasingly important, allowing professionals to prepare for mission fulfilment in a real-world-like environment, interacting with other crews and becoming familiar with the increasingly numerous and complex systems that make up the combat cloud. Thanks to the Ministry of Defence’s commitment to incorporating the latest technologies in helicopter simulation for the Armed Forces, the NH90 simulator has already proven its effectiveness in this regard,” says Rafael Junco, Indra’s Director of Simulation.

Thanks to its fidelity to the aircraft and its behaviour, the simulator will reduce the number of real flight hours required to ensure the best training and education of pilots by 40%, as well as advanced tactical training crews need to take on missions with the utmost safety and efficiency, interoperating with a multitude of systems, just as in the real world. This is made possible by the simulator’s ability to replicate scenarios with all types of threats within any imaginable training condition, thus avoiding putting people and the aircraft at risk, and allowing pilots and crew to practise complex manoeuvres and manage stress in emergency situations.

The simulator also faithfully reproduces all possible weather conditions, both day and night, and allows the use of the helicopter’s actual image intensifier tubes (IITs) for flight simulation using night vision goggles (NVG). Another functionality of the FMS system is a networked simulation architecture, based on the HLA (High Level Architecture) standard, which provides for joint tactical training in a mission from several simulators simultaneously, located at different bases and with a range of aircraft models and platforms. In this way, NH90 helicopter pilots can train on the same mission from different bases, which the Cuatro Vientos base in Madrid will be able to join thanks to the new simulator.