The US Navy’s PMA-265 F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office has announced it conducted a successful technology demonstration for the Secure Live Virtual Constructive Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) in September.
The demonstration showed SLATE’s Synthetic Inject to Live (SITL) – Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) system maturity and performance in supporting training against near-peer threats, while validating its technology readiness level with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler. The demonstration event included four flight tests, supported by the USN’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23, Boeing, and Cubic.
The announcement says the resulting SLATE SITL capabilities, technical specifications, and lessons learned are currently in work for transition into the US Navy’s training program of record – the Tactical Combat Training System (TCTS) Increment II.
The SLATE system connects live with virtual (simulators) and constructive entities (computer-generated forces) in a training environment that replicates the threat density and capability required to prepare military forces for the high-end fight.
Rather than solely hosting LVC systems in an aircraft’s Operational Flight Programs (OFP) and becoming potentially locked-in to non-compatible vendor-specific solutions, the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) established SLATE to utilise an advanced datalink to support the multiple classified security levels necessary to support training involving platforms, such as the F-35A.
The project utilised F/A-18 E/F/G, F-15, and F-16 aircraft to prove the concept while utilising a design built upon existing ACMI infrastructure. This supports a baseline for the integration of different types of aircraft, as well as ground and maritime participants from the ADF and coalition partners. While OFPs will remain a big part of LVC, the architecture of SLATE allows them to be integrated due to common data formats and security protocols.
“The SITL LVC capabilities demonstrated by SLATE are essential to providing our warfighters with a complex and realistic training environment that promotes combat readiness,” PMA-265 SLATE Integrated Product Team lead, Megan Sullivan said in a release. “The event’s completion informs planning and enables more rapid fielding to the fleet.”
The RAAF also participated in the SLATE demo, with a view to promoting and informing future coalition and joint service operations under the US Air Force Encrypted LVC Integrated Training Environment program, and allow for seamless training between the US and Australia.