CAE USA announced that the United States Navy has declared an updated MH-60S ‘Sierra’ Operational Flight Trainer (OFT) as ready-for-training at Naval Air Station (NAS) North Island near San Diego, California. This MH-60S OFT, originally manufactured by Lockheed Martin, was completely upgraded by CAE to add new technologies and ensure concurrency with other MH-60S training devices as well as the operational MH-60S helicopters.
As per John Lenyo, President and General Manager, CAE USA, “CAE is very proud of the partnership we have established with the Navy on both the MH-60S and MH-60R training programs, and will continue to leverage our experience and world-class simulation technologies to help the Navy lower risk, reduce costs and most importantly, prepare helicopter aircrews for mission success.”
The technology refresh and updates to the fixed-based MH-60S OFT included the addition of motion seats, upgraded image generator visual system, and a new Barco CD2260 visual display system.
CAE also performed significant engineering updates to re-architect the hardware and software computing designs to bring this MH-60S OFT to a common architecture with the Navy’s suite of CAE-built MH-60S training devices. CAE is currently the prime contractor responsible for the design and manufacture of MH-60S OFTs and Weapons Tactics Trainers (WTTs) as well as MH-60R Tactical Operational Flight Trainers (TOFTs) for the US Navy.