It’s official – the first-ever vIITSEC is underway and leaders across the global defense community are sharing their insights and best practices about simulation and training for today’s warfighter with attendees around the world.
To contribute to this discussion, we connected with Elaine Bitonti, Executive Director of Business Development for Mission Systems at Collins Aerospace. In a round table discussion format, we explored vIITSEC’s theme “The Future is Now,” important lessons learned from Project Convergence, and the cutting-edge, collaborative technologies from Collins Aerospace that are fueling a more prepared, lethal warfighter starting at the training phase.
“Given our strong history in our simulation and training business, we have a really good integrated simulation and modeling environment where we can integrate government tools, third party tools, and Collins Aerospace tools to create a digital environment that lets us prototype before delivering [programs] to the warfighter,” Bitonti explained, noting the significance of that collaborative approach. “That allows us to really accelerate development and try out different things from an operational perspective before we move into prototyping, which is really critical in this current day and age.”
Bitonti elaborated on Collins Aerospace’s company theme for this year’s I/ITSEC – Keeping Warfighters More Connected, Effective, and Safer – by explaining the role of simulation fidelity and training realism in the creation of equipped warfighters and training at the point of need. She referenced a couple of solutions specific to Collins Aerospace including the U.S. Navy’s Tactical Combat Training System Increment II (TCTSII) and the Panorama HiLite system, which made its debut at this year’s I/ITSEC during Collins Aerospace’s Innovation Showcase.
“The highly accurate mirrors ensure visual performance is maintained over the entire display all the way to edges,” stated Bitonti about the Panorama HiLite system, noting the advanced training realism capabilities. “This gives more effective training scenarios when you’re doing missions like air refueling or maritime patrol and it gives you a cost-effective way to train those missions.”
Bitonti concluded with a strong emphasis on the importance of industry and customer collaboration as all of these different technologies and innovations come together for the warfighter. With closer collaboration comes a broader selection of options for their customers, ensuring they pick the one that meets their needs most effectively.
“We’re really looking at how we can utilize our baseline modeling and simulation capability from an operational analysis standpoint to help customers with their exciting upcoming events like Project Convergence 21, like ABMS demos and Orange Flags,” she stated. “We can take customers’ problems and, using our realistic modeling and simulation environment, work with customers around what type of solution they should choose…that level of collaboration with the customer is really what I think about when I see us going toward future solutions.”
You can watch the full discussion with Modern Integrated Warfare and Bitonti on-demand here.