From Sim to Sea: CAE

The RCN’s Digital Training Revolution

BY JAMES CARELESS

We live in an age of growing global uncertainty, where the lineup of potential adversaries and reliable allies keeps changing. In such an uncertain world, Canada’s maritime strength depends on sovereign innovation, including cutting-edge training systems that are designed, built, and controlled right here at home. As Canada’s largest domestically owned-and-operated defence company, CAE is leading the charge to provide the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) with the sovereign innovation it needs today and tomorrow.

            “In this uncertain world, CAE’s goal is to serve the needs of the Canadian military in terms of products and services, and to be a trusted partner with other domestic firms and our federal government to reinforce Canada’s Defence Industrial Base (DIB) and make our country more competitive, more present, and more performant in the global environment,” said Jeff Tasseron, CAE’s Director of Strategy & Business Development.

READ: Canada’s #1 Defence Company – CAE

WHAT CAE HAS ON OFFER FOR THE RCN

            When it comes to meeting the RCN’s training needs, CAE has a lot to offer. “We provide a comprehensive suite of naval and maritime training capabilities,” said Jason Healey, CAE’s

Naval Business Development Lead. “They span from simulators to full-spectrum training management. So that’s one piece that I think really differentiates us from other training companies. Our suite of training solutions includes immersive bridge and operations room simulators. They deal with everything from individual training to full crew training for ships and submarines, including training events like damage control, and firefighting. We also offer extensive engineering and maintenance trainers that allow crews to practice fault diagnosis and critical skills.”      

            The purpose of these CAE maritime training systems and solutions is to allow the RCN and other navies to train in high fidelity ship-centric environments, without actually having to set out to sea. “As well, we offer extensive submarine training simulators featuring simulated sonar, periscope combat control systems, and maneuvering propulsion control,” Healey told CDR. “We actually built the submarine trainer for the RCN’s Victoria class submarine 20 years ago.”

            To date, CAE’s maritime simulation systems and solutions are being used by the RCN, the Swedish navy, the UAE navy, and several Western navies, as well as an Asia-Pacific navy that has both conventional and nuclear submarines. “We do have a substantial footprint with the Royal Australian Navy, delivering surface fleet training systems,” said Healey.

            Worth noting: CAE is redefining the very nature of naval training through multi-domain integration across sea, air, cyber, and space. “It’s based on the idea that if you build large, extremely comprehensive, extremely realistic synthetic environments, then they are not limited to an individual platform,” Tasseron told CDR. “Because our training technologies are people-centric rather than platform-centric, you can adapt and change that training environment very fluidly in ways that were not possible before. At the same time, we’re balancing our Canadian roots with our global reach in naval training and systems integration by developing, maintaining, and evolving these systems right here in Canada.”

            Over the years, CAE has been one of the CAF’s top performing participants in actual real-world operations. “We have been front and centre in NATO operations in Afghanistan and beyond,” said Tasseron. “Our mission then and now is to provide advanced training capability that is built, proven, resilient and can be sustained in a sovereign fashion. At the end of the day, this puts high quality soldiers, sailors and air personnel into operational contexts where they can be relied on. That is how we support Canada’s strategy.”

READ: CAE Statement on Launch of Canada’s Defence Investment Agency

FUTURE-READY TRAINING

Training for tomorrow’s threats requires more than simulation — it demands training transformation. This is why CAE is harnessing immersive synthetic technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and networked multi-person training simulations to prepare sailors for real-world operations. It helps to create training ecosystems that are future-proof and future-ready.

“One of the nice things about synthetic environments is that they’re modular and scalable, meaning they can be tailored to different vessel classes like frigates, submarines, patrol ships, as we do in our UAE naval training centre,” Healey said. “As such, these systems. can be adapted to train everything from small coastal vessel forces to large blue water navies. Either way, CAE’s simulators and systems allow navies to train entire crews and/or individual specialists regardless of where they’re training or their fleet size.”

The sheer scale of training that CAE can support allows their clients to create joint advanced training ecosystems for their multi-branch militaries. Not only does this help countries scale their training capabilities to their own needs, but it can also boost their domestic defence industries rather than just benefiting one company — because CAE is ready and willing to work with other companies to make these ecosystems happen.

“CAE obviously has core competencies that set us apart from the competition,” Healey told CDR. “However, we recognize that the world of technology is changing rapidly and we cannot and should not be trying to own the entire universe of training. And so as we architect these training ecosystems — these large assemblies of connective technology and training devices and courseware and synthetic environments — we’re purposely building them in ways that not only allow, but actually encourage, participation by other firms.”

At the same time, CAE is constantly shaping its training systems and solutions in line with lessons learned at multinational exercises such as RIMPAC and Joint Warrior. “Absolutely,” Tasseron said. “We are also starting to build an extensive persistent network architecture that ties all CAE innovation locations together into an ongoing ‘Exercisenet’. It will allow us to offer our various user militaries opportunities to harvest data from these exercises to use in their training systems.”

SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY – BUILT IN CANADA, BUILT FOR CANADA

            Sovereignty is strength; and CAE is Canada’s strategic advantage. As a Canadian owned-and-operated defence company, CAE can offer the CAF the high level of sovereign capability required to defend our country effectively and efficiently. This is the kind of ‘sovereign resilience’ that a nation enjoys when the defence technology it relies on is homegrown.

            “There’s no simpler way to put it: If we don’t build it here, design it here, have IP here, and control the factors of production that allow us to sustain and operate our pieces of equipment, then we are taking on risk as a country,” said Tasseron. “This places the onus on Canadian-owned companies like CAE, of which there are not very many, to have a very significant defence and industrial footprint here, as well as a significant civil footprint. That’s the very essence of sovereign resilience.”

            Add the problems of tariffs and waning defence relationships with once-reliable allies, and having access to sovereign training solutions is more important today than ever before. This is why CAE’s made-in-Canada training approach is so vital for RCN projects such as the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC), the Arctic and Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS), and the Halifax-class modernization. “What CAE’s made-in-Canada approach has at its core is the idea that although there’s sort of commonalities in terms of how Canada and other countries operate in the naval domain or otherwise, at the end of the day, there are going to be some national sovereign differences that need to be addressed during training,” Tasseron said. “In that situation, having a Canadian company that is intimately familiar with those use cases and employs a cadre of defence and technical professionals — that in many cases come from the very environment that they’re selling the training products into — just creates a better quality offering and better quality operational outcomes.”

            At the same time, CAE’s systems and solutions comply with NATO training standards.

“This makes them easily exportable, which we do all the time through our defence and security international business,” said Healey.

“What makes Canadian training systems export-ready is the fact that Canada engages in the world,” Tasseron added. “We strive for interoperability because we are a good coalition defence partner, and have been for decades and decades.”

THE FUTURE FORCE – SUSTAINABLE, SCALABLE, STRATEGIC

            The future of naval readiness is digital, distributed, and data driven. CAE is already there with digital-first training systems and solutions.

            One benefit of CAE’s digital-first approach to training is its sustainability. When you can do networked naval training in AR on dry land, you don’t have to leave port to bring sailors up to speed.

            “Our navy alone spends a large amount of money on fuel sailing in and out of harbour,” said Healey. “So when it comes to reducing emissions and operational costs for the CAF as a whole and potentially extending the life of its assets, CAE can provide that through a virtual training environment that allows navies and air forces to simulate full mission profiles without physically deploying. If the RCN’s training approach, and the system used by the Royal Canadian Air Force, shifts to a more scalable immersive training environment, we can move towards Canada’s and NATO’s net zero defence goals by helping reduce that carbon footprint in military operations globally, and that can extend beyond Canada into the global military environment.”

            Another benefit is scalability: CAE’s modular approach to building training platforms makes them scalable for both small coastal forces and large expeditionary fleets. “This is all based on our digital-first approach, which lends itself to modularity,” Tasseron said. “It also comes back to CAE’s training philosophy; that at the end of every training journey there’s a human being, and it doesn’t really matter whether they’re in a small ship or when they’re in a large fleet asset or wherever. They are going to have much the same kind of training requirements and needs, albeit with different equipment in each case.”

            As for the future of naval training? CAE sees artificial intelligence (AI) playing a big, big role. “The next frontier will be determined by how quickly we can mature AI’s deep analytical capabilities to harvest and understand training data, and how we can combine that with AI to enhance virtual instruction and instructor augmentation technologies,” said Tasseron. “For instance, AI could be used to monitor training in progress and to adjust it on the fly in response to the inputs being received, either from individuals or entire teams. And so, I think the next frontier in naval training innovation is in really using those data-centric tools and being able to seamlessly scale the fidelity of the offerings. I think that’s the hugely exciting next frontier for training that CAE is looking at now.”

            One thing is certain: Whatever the training challenges, and whatever the CAF’s needs, CAE will be there to address them with the very best made in Canada systems and solutions. This is precisely the kind of sovereign innovation that the CAF needs to keep the True North strong and free. This is what CAE has to offer to the RCN today and into the future.

James Careless is CDR’s Ottawa Bureau Chief