INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Saab Training Systems
Q: What are your thoughts about challenges for the live training industry in the future?
A: We recognize that the military has to meet more urgent operational needs with mission-specific changes in requirements. In the past a procurement cycle could be several years long. Now, we should be aiming to reduce this cycle to months. We as an industry need to meet totally new and evolving requirements that have to be delivered at short notice. And naturally still being cost effective!
As I see it, this agility is made up of four key components: conceptual, technical, commercial and procedural. A failing in any of these will have a considerable impact in our ability to achieve agility. However, without clarity of purpose the benefits of agility are dissipated. To address this, industry needs to have a robust and effective relationship with the customer. We must establish and sustain a collective understanding of the needs of today and the potential needs of tomorrow.
One example to highlight the substance of my words:
Deployable Tactical Engagement Simulation, a project we are supporting for the British Army, has used a commercial model based around leasing. It enables the training provider in either Belize or Kenya to request a tailored solution for each unit they train. Saab personnel establish and sustain the training environment and support the delivery of the AARs. The unit concentrates on improving and consolidating performance. Saab deals with the rest.
Q: Can you tell me something about Saab’s training philosophy?
A: We think like the Greek philosopher Aristotle; “Excellence is an art won by training.” You can also put it this way: Training could definitely be the difference between tremendous success and devastating failure.
The individual soldier is the centerpiece in a modern force. And consequently, in all modern training, too. At Saab we believe that the most important prerequisite for training effect is realism. Realism that makes it possible to train just the way you fight, and for every participating soldier to accumulate an experience that is valid for those decisive moments in his future mission. That is why our training systems are built with high fidelity technology and are made to work equally at home station or when deployed.
Q: Briefly discuss how your company has integrated coalition forces’ lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan into your training systems?
A: The integration of the lessons learned began for us as early as the spring of 2004 when we delivered the first two instrumentation systems to the U.S. Army for use in Iraq. The importance of urban warfare training was refined to emphasize the tracking of the soldiers seamlessly from the open terrain on the road, to a building interior and back out again. The Marine Corps had already fielded a Saab Deployable Instrumented Training System [DITS] for use in its large desert training base at Twenty Nine Palms, Calif. In 2004, the service initiated an evolutionary program called Urban DITS [UDITS] in response to lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The lessons learned were not only tactical. Saab, Army and Marine users also discovered that early and collaborative problem solving can shrink the procurement cycle to a matter of months. We, as a team, were able to provide the combination of tactical and technical expertise to rapidly provide training solutions to meet the newly identified requirements.
Q: Please update us on Saab Training USA’s progress to establish its presence in the U.S. market.
A: We started working with the U.S. Army in the early 1970s to introduce the first tank targets. We fielded these devices in great numbers in coordination with a small U.S. business under a successful licensed production program.
We grew the target and simulation programs with a small team of U.S. and Swedish engineers and managers in the U.S. for the next 10 years. We later established a U.S. corporation in Orlando [in 1997] to be close to the Army [PEO STRI] and Marine Corps [PMTRASYS] commands in the Central Florida Simulation Research Park. The U.S. company has grown to 40 employees. The sales to U.S. forces during these three decades now top $320 million for 10,000 simulators and targets sold. We have begun transferring technology to the Florida-based company for local manufacturing.
Another significant step that enhances our U.S. presence was the approval in 2007 of a special security agreement with the Department of Defense to oversee the U.S. company’s compliance with industrial security and export regulations and to establish a facility clearance for Saab Training USA. The American engineering and production staff in the U.S. facility allows Saab to modify existing commercial training products in wide use around the world to the exacting DoD information assurance and other development requirements. ♦
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