The Royal Brunei Air Force (RBAF) is now using CAE’s Multi-Purpose Training Centre to train its 24 Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawk pilots in everything from procedural techniques for new pilots, through to recurrent training such as night flying with night vision goggles (NVGs) for those who have experience, through to mission-specific scenarios.
Asian Military Review editor Andrew Drwiega was invited by CAE to take a look at the facility, located near the airport at Brunei Darussalam.
Colonel Johar Abdullah, Head of Aviation Standards and Evaluation, BRAF, said that the facility had been a significant benefit in retraining pilots who had been experienced at flying the BRAF’s Bell Helicopter 214STs onto the S-70is. Due to Brunei’s tropical equatorial climate, it had been challenging to train new pilots sitting in a real cockpit for hours in the heat and humidity.
CAE’s 3000 Series simulator presents a high quality image with national terrain database that allows pilots to be familiar with the terrain that they are flying over. “With this simulator’s graphics and responsiveness you can feel and react as you would in a real aircraft,” he said.
“The CAE Brunei multi-purpose training centre represents a joint commitment of $100 million by the Government of Brunei and CAE,” said Rozman Junaidi, general manager of the CAE facility. It also includes another 3000 Series simulator to train civil Sikorsky S-92 pilots, together with a flight training device (FTD) that has been used to train PC-7 pilots.
Future expansion was a provision of the original design, with three spare bays that could be used to house future military or civil flight simulators. See the March 2018 issue of Asian Military Review for the full article (subscribe here).
