Patrick Durrant | Sydney
Two operational flight trainers (OFTs) for the RAAF's future P-8A Poseidon aircraft will be provided under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the US Navy.
The P-8A OFTs for the RAAF will be similar to the P-8A OFTs that CAE is already developing for Boeing for delivery to the US Navy. The company designs and manufactures the P-8A OFT hardware to Level D standards, the highest qualification for flight simulators. CAE also provides the 737-800 OFT software baseline and simulation-based software lab environment that is used for P-8A OFT development and integration tasks. These are then delivered to Boeing, who installs and integrates software specific to the P-8A aircraft.
President and General Manager CAE USA Ray Duquette said "the Navy has significantly increased the amount of synthetic training it does as part of the P-8A training program, and the high-fidelity P-8A operational flight trainers developed by CAE and Boeing play a key role in the overall P-8A training curriculum".
The two P-8A OFTs for the RAAF are scheduled for delivery to RAAF Base Edinburgh in late 2017. The P-8A Poseidon is a new long-range anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare aircraft currently being developed for the US Navy by prime contractor Boeing. It is a derivative of Boeing's next-generation 737-800 aircraft and is used for maritime and littoral operations. The Indian Navy and the RAAF are the first international customers of the P-8A.