The Commonwealth has released a request for information (RFI) for the Project AIR 5428 Phase 3 Air Mission Training System (AMTS).
The AMTS will be located at the Air Academy at RAAF Base East Sale in Victoria, and will be required to train Air Force Air Battle Managers, Air Mobility Officers, Air Traffic Controllers, Electronic Warfare Officers, Maritime Patrol and Response Officers, Operations Officers, and Weapons System Officers.
The RFI is initially seeking to understand capability options, technologies, and additional considerations related to the AMTS in order to assist the Commonwealth to develop its requirements for the project. It will provide an opportunity for Industry to interact with Defence, to express an interest in future participation, to allow for capability demonstrations, and to describe considerations for defence to take into account.
The Air Academy was formerly called the Air Training Wing, and was created in 2019 to bring together a number of different ADF aviation training schools in one location with common and modularised curriculum elements. While Navy and Army officer aviation candidates (OAC) have pre-determined their speciality, RAAF OACs can gain experience across multiple streams before choosing their specialisation.
The RFI says the AMTS will be based on three primary elements – an Integrated Learning Environment (ILE), ground-based training, and airborne training.
The ILE will comprise content and learning management, methods for professional and contemporary training delivery, integration with the Ground-based Training and Airborne Training elements, hosting of interactive digital learning tools, provision and maintenance of contemporary training devices and courseware, administration and coordination of training resources, system assurance (reliability, maintainability and availability), and the ability to implement improvements based on feedback and analytics.
The ground-based training will include hardware and software required for air mission training to provide simulation of events/scenarios and environments, to maximise the use of simulation, emulation, and physical environments to represent an operational battlespace, to enhance, optimise, and contemporise training delivery, and be integrated with the ILE and Airborne Training elements.
The airborne training will be an airborne training environment and associated ground-based systems to provide candidates with a real aircraft experience. It will enable assessment of suitability for airborne roles, provide aviation fundamentals training, and be aligned and integrated with the ILE and Ground-based Training elements.
Responses to the RFI are due to be submitted to the Commonwealth through the AusTender website by 1600 on Thursday 29 October 2020