The world’s largest flight simulator manufacturer says lessons learned in the sim will help it develop real-world applications and it’s investing about $600 million to develop new technologies. CAE says Project Falcon will last five years and, in addition to expanding current modeling and simulation technologies, “increase its capabilities beyond training into other areas of the aerospace and defense market, such as analysis and operations,” according to a news release issued by the company. Project Falcon will include “augmented visionics,” which sounds a lot like enhanced vision, new and better sims for future manned and unmanned aircraft and, in what sounds like the world’s coolest video game, “networking technologies to allow defense forces of many nations to participate simultaneously in real time training and mission rehearsal exercises.”
The Canadian government is providing a $200 million loan to help the company. The loan is repayable and, in the meantime, will help create about 1,000 high-technology jobs in Montreal, which is also home to Bombardier and its new CSeries program. More than 40,000 people work in aerospace in Montreal. CAE CEO Robert Brown said cutting-edge companies like CAE must invest in research and development to stay on top of new technologies even when times are tough. “Innovation is essential for CAE in order to sustain its leadership position in modeling, simulation and training. We will therefore, continue to invest in R&D, even in these challenging times,” he said.
