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CLOSE ATTENTION: The Minister for Defence, Dr Brendan Nelson opens the Thales Australian Transformation and Innovation Centre (ATIC) at Garden Island.
Photo: ABPH Paul Berry
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By Michael Brooke
Volume
49, No. 6, April 20, 2006
The Minister for Defence, Dr Brendan Nelson,
recently launched a new world-class battlespace transformation
centre that will improve the capabilities of the “man-in-the-loop”
ranging from the individual war-fighter at the tactical level
to coalition planners at the operational level.
Dr Nelson said the Australian Transformational and Innovation
Centre (ATIC) at Sydney’s Garden Island was important because
it would help the ADF with coalition interoperability and network
centric warfare.
“The ATIC will significantly enhance the capabilities of
the ADF when this system-of-systems is when linked with all the
other simulators we have acquired for our new platforms such as
the Aussie Tiger,” he said.
He said what this means to the common soldier is that Australia’s
armed forces will soon be using virtual reality in the way of
sophisticated modelling and simulation to develop and integrate
new technologies and war fighting concepts.
Dr Nelson said the world-class ATIC, which was developed by Thales
and is operated by ADI, will provide the ADF with a simulation
environment capable of incorporating thousands of individual entities
from entire task forces to individual soldiers.
“The ATIC will enable the ADF to develop systems that are
capable of identifying targets and moving forces to deal with
threats more quickly than any potential enemy,” he said.
Dr Nelson said that the ATIC’s ability to enable collaboration
and teaming by tri-service coalition forces - and at the same
time incorporate real and simulated forces - makes it a truly
great system.
The ATIC, which is part of a network of 12 similar centres throughout
the world is based on Thales Battlespace Transformation Centre
(BTC).
The Battlelab has three main goals. Its first objective is to
demonstrate how the ADF’s legacy equipment can be connected
into command chains.
The second goal is modelling new systems and approaches with customer
participation.
Once a device or application has met its requirements, the centre’s
third function is to work with customers to create new operational
and training doctrine.
The ATIC’s three components also serve as preparation, virtual
testing and evaluation functions.
