Antycip Simulation partners with John Cockerill's Agueris

Antycip Simulation has teamed up with Agueris, a subsidiary of John Cockerill, to deliver new ground terrain and turret simulation solutions used by John Cockerill to train its customers. The systems have been rolled out in France and the Middle East.

Agueris became a fully owned subsidiary of John Cockerill, formerly known as CMID, in 2016 having previously been the company's main customer. It designs, develops, delivers and supports armoured vehicle and turret training simulators.

Image credit:  Antycip Simulation

John Cockerill tasked them with providing generic training simulators for a large-scale international programme involving the shipping, delivery and deployment of hundreds of 30/40 mm and 105 mm turrets. It also required the deployment of training capacities within dedicated centres. They took full responsibility for the development of the simulators, training of its operators and the design of the courses.

Usually in the modelling and simulation industry, a gunnery training simulator for armoured vehicles is a physical mock up. This is large, costly and dedicated to only one system. John Cockerill wanted to replace this approach with a versatile system, so that one simulator could be used on various turrets. They also wanted to use embedded simulation in each turret: a revolutionary concept whereby the operational system becomes the trainer, using real environment commands and controls – allowing for training anytime, anywhere.

To successfully deliver such a progressive project, Agueris turned to Antycip Simulation to help design the required bespoke simulation solutions.

"We are widely recognised in the defence simulation community as an expert provider of COTS solutions, with a depth of project knowledge and experience that dates back over 20 years," said Johan Besnainou, France and Spain director at Antycip Simulation.

John Cockerill

Antycip is also a reseller of VT MAK and CM Labs products in France. After a competitive review, Agueris selected Antycip based on technical and functional requirements. The company also has a long-established relationship with Antycip, which has laid the foundations for a strong, ongoing relationship.

The simulators are designed to train the turret and vehicle crews to operate the weapons system from basic gunnery training to crew-level training and tactical training at platoon-level. Each system includes a virtual interactive cockpit allowing the simulation of the operator’s environment, coupled with a tactical simulation. The crew can perform technical and tactical training up to platoon level. A specifically designed instructor operating station allows animation and supervision, exercise creation and control, after action review and student monitoring. The system is mobile, so it can be deployed in a classroom, shelter or in specific mobile trailers. Thanks to the virtual cockpit concept, a single simulator can be used to train on various weapon systems, through dynamic software reconfiguration.

best solutions

The VT MAK and CM Labs solutions used in the simulators are recognised as leading edge COTS products. They can easily combine together to give both the broad scope and high fidelity elements needed in a simulation solution by their adherence to industry integration standards (DIS/HLA) and they can be readily and effectively networked into other simulations, with no concern over compromising the efficacy of the simulation and training activities.

"The VT MAK suite of products is recognised for its comprehensiveness,"   Besnainou said. "From visualising the terrain to simulating enemy or friendly entities, to enabling effective training scenario generation. Quite simply, they offered the best solutions for this particular project."

Several of the systems have already been deployed for John Cockerill - both 30-40-105 mm turrets and for LCTS90 systems (90 mm turrets) – in a dedicated training centre in Commercy (France), and a mobile, shelter-based version was also delivered to one of John Cockerill’s customers. In each case, the feedback was positive with crews able to work on their technical and tactical skills.