SPECIAL REPORT
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Futuristic Insight
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Boeing AEC offers the virtual environment to explore tomorrow’s requirements s
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At the Boeing’s futuristic Analysis and Experimentation Centre
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By Atul Chandra
Bengaluru: For any nation, identifying the threats it is likely face in the future and ensuring that the required capabilities are created well in time, is of paramount importance. Robust analysis and experimentation would be one of the key aspects to making informed and objective decisions as the country and its military looks to its future needs.
This need to engage with Indian customers and understand emerging defence & security needs was key to the setting up of Boeing’s futuristic Analysis and Experimentation Centre (A&E Centre) that is part of Phantom Works at Bengaluru. Force was the first defence magazine to visit this centre last month and got a firsthand look at the facility. The state-of-the-art centre was developed in partnership with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and is aimed at providing evidence-based decision support for the development of new technologies and advanced concepts for military and security requirements. According to Shane Rogers who heads the facility in
India “BEL is one of our |
in-country partners and we have enjoyed a successful collaboration with BEL on this program.” He added that “The facility provides BEL with training on technology and approaches imported by Boeing to India. BEL is using that knowledge to support some of their programs.”
The A&E Centre uses a wide spectrum of virtual and constructive simulation environments, enabling users at the facility to run real-time scenarios in dynamic environments using the latest Boeing modelling, simulation and experimentation capabilities. According to Boeing, it will assist in the analysis of the country’s future defence and war-fighting needs and ensure that the armed forces receive the right technologies, on-time and on budget. This will be done using Boeing’s proprietary and commercial tools in a collaborative environment with experts and decision makers at the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD). Boeing now gets an opportunity to streamline its Research & Development (R&D) programs in India and abroad while focusing on prototyping and providing technically compliant future solutions at a lower cost. Shane told Force that “Boeing hopes to understand emerging requirements early. Preferably in the concept phase of the system development life cycle and this is what we use experimentation for.’ At the same time Boeing insists that while the A&E Centre will help shape R&D spends, the facility is programme independent as this is important to build confidence among the various users who will come here.
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