08 July 2015

Industry: CAE wins defence contracts valued at more than C$150 million

  • MH-60R maintenance and rear-crew trainers for Royal Australian Navy
  • Two UH-72A Lakota FTDs for U.S. Army
  • Two full-mission simulators for undisclosed customer

Montreal, Canada, July 7, 2015 - (NYSE: CAE; TSX: CAE) - CAE today announced that it has won defence contracts valued at more than C$150 million to provide simulation products as well as training services for global military customers.

Some of the key contracts include providing additional MH-60R training devices for the Royal Australian Navy, additional UH-72A Lakota flight training devices for the U.S. Army, and two full-mission simulators for an undisclosed customer in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region.
The contracts announced today are included as part of CAE's Defence and Security order intake for the first quarter. Also of note, the value of this announcement includes an order for two P-8A operational flight trainers for the U.S. Navy, which was communicated to trade media on June 29, 2015.

"Our focus on being a training systems integrator has enabled us to make good progress on the implementation of our strategy in the first quarter, which included the competitive win to provide the U.S. Army with long-term fixed-wing training services," said Gene Colabatistto, CAE's Group President, Defence & Security. "These additional contracts we are announcing today are all related to the extended use of simulation-based training as part of these programs, further demonstrating that global defence forces are increasingly adopting synthetic training for more of their training requirements."

US Navy/Royal Australian Navy

CAE was awarded a contract to develop an MH-60R composite maintenance trainer (CMT) as well as procure an MH-60R rear crew trainer (RCT) for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) under the United States foreign military sale (FMS) program.

CAE USA will be the prime contractor responsible for the design and development of the MH-60R CMT that will be delivered in 2017 to HMAS Albatross, located near Nowra in New South Wales.  CAE USA will also procure a commercial-off-the-shelf MH-60R RCT from Australia-based Virtual Simulation Systems and have responsibility for delivery and installation at HMAS Albatross. CAE has already delivered one MH-60R tactical operational flight trainer (TOFT) and one MH-60R avionics maintenance trainer/weapons load trainer to the RAN, and will deliver a second MH-60R TOFT in 2016.

The MH-60R CMT will be a modified MH-60R helicopter specifically designed to provide mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems training to RAN MH-60R aircraft maintenance personnel. The MH-60R CMT will include a suite of instructor-controlled malfunctions that facilitate training in fault isolation and removal/replacement of aircraft components. 

The MH-60R RCT will be a modified aircraft mock-up that features a module for training hoist operations as well as two weapons modules for training MH-60R door gunnery operations.

U.S. Army UH-72A Lakota

CAE was awarded a contract by Airbus Defense and Space, Inc. to manufacture two additional UH-72A Lakota flight training devices (FTDs). These UH-72A FTDs, the seventh and eight being produced by CAE for the U.S. Army, will be delivered to Fort Rucker, Alabama during the spring of 2016. These training devices, which are Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Level 6-capable FTDs that feature an aircraft-specific cockpit with the fidelity and performance of a full-flight simulator without the motion, will support rotary wing pilot training at the U.S. Army's Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE).

The CAE-built UH-72A FTDs feature a vibration platform and a wide 200-degree by 70-degree field-of-view display system driven by the next-generation CAE Medallion-6000 image generator to immerse pilots in a high-fidelity synthetic training environment. The UH-72A FTDs for the U.S. Army are also fielded with the CAE-developed Common Database (CDB), enhancing the Army's ability to leverage existing U.S. Government-owned databases to support their helicopter training requirements.

Undisclosed customer 

CAE has been awarded a contract to provide two full-mission simulators for an undisclosed customer in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region.