BAE invests in simulator upgrade

BAE Systems has announced a £10 million (US$14 million) upgrade to its “maritime integration and support centre” (MISC) at Portsmouth that supports Royal Navy warships.

Shaped like a Type 45 destroyer, MISC replicates real-life ship conditions using the same combat systems found across the Royal Navy’s surface fleet.

It also researches future combat systems and technologies, such as systems used to track threats, co-ordinate weapons and manage on-deck aircraft movements.

The investment program will research artificial intelligence, information and electronic warfare, unmanned vehicles and new weapons.

MISC will benefit from a visualisation suite that can display live tactical data from any Royal Navy warship anywhere in the world.

The technology will provide BAE Systems’ Naval Combat Systems Integration Support Services (NCSISS) engineers with all the information they need to keep ships battle ready and support them in their deployments.

The visualisation suite adds to existing MISC technology. MISC will remotely integrate the HMS Prince of Wales combat system in 2018, and in July testing will begin on combat system equipment for the Royal Navy’s new City-class Type 26 global combat ships.

The first ship in class, Glasgow, is under construction at BAE Systems’ facilities on the Clyde.