Thales Wins EUR 236M contract for Tiger Helicopter Simulators
OCCAR (the Joint Armaments Cooperation Organisation) and Thales have announced the signing of a production contract worth EUR 236 million for 18 Eurocopter Tiger combat helicopter simulators. It calls for the supply of 9 full-flight mission simulators and 9 trainers, plus associated support systems and an option for a further 11 simulators.
The simulators will be used at the École Franco-Allemande (EFA) joint training centre for French and German Tiger pilots in Le Luc, Var, southeast France, and in the Tiger operational regiments in Germany (Fritzlar and Roth) and France (Pau and Étain), to train Tiger combat helicopter aircrews. Around 60 French and German pilots will be trained each year at EFA, before being assigned to their operational units, where they will continue to benefit from the simulators in ongoing training. It will reportedly be possible to perform up to 75% of their training flight hours using simulators.
Deliveries will take place over a period of six years. The first simulators will be delivered to the EFA training centre in 2006, with subsequent deliveries to the operational regiments in Germany (Fritzlar and Roth) and France (Pau and Étain). This contract follows the October 2000 Tiger simulator development contract, which involved an initial delivery of four simulators to the EFA training centre. The development phase enabled to validate the selected training concept, as well as the high levels of performance and realism of the Thales simulators.
In a separate contract, Thales is currently developing four Tiger simulators for the Australian Army, for delivery in early 2006.
