Rheinmetall mit Großauftrag erfolgreich in Russland

Russ­ian Army orders state-of-the-art train­ing centre

The Defence Min­istry of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion has con­tract­ed with the Düs­sel­dorf-based Rhein­metall Group and its Russ­ian part­ner JSCo Oboron­servis to build a major army train­ing cen­tre in Muli­no, Rus­sia. Locat­ed in the Vol­ga region, by 2014 this sim­u­la­tion-sup­port­ed train­ing cen­tre – the most advanced sys­tem of its kind world­wide – will be able to train 30,000 troops a year. For Rhein­metall the order is worth well over €100 mil­lion includ­ing fur­ther options. 

Source: Rhein­metall Defence

Source: Rhein­metall Defence

This con­tract has spe­cial strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance for the Rhein­metall Group, rep­re­sent­ing the Ger­man defence industry’s first sig­nif­i­cant foothold in the Russ­ian mar­ket. In light of plans to mod­ern­ize the equip­ment of the Russ­ian armed forces, the oppor­tu­ni­ties for fol­low-on orders from the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion are considerable. 

Rhein­metall is one of the world’s lead­ing sup­pli­ers and oper­a­tors of sim­u­la­tion and train­ing sys­tems for ground, air and naval applications. 

The Group already oper­ates the Bundeswehr’s Gefecht­sübungszen­trum Heer, or GÜZ, a high-tech army train­ing cen­tre locat­ed in the Alt­mark in cen­tral Ger­many, on which the new facil­i­ty in Rus­sia will be mod­elled. A fur­ther cus­tomer from the Mid­dle East placed an order with Rhein­metall for a com­pa­ra­ble facil­i­ty in 2009. 

To exe­cute this project, Rhein­metall has entered into a strate­gic part­ner­ship with JSCo Oboron­servis, the Russ­ian com­pa­ny that will serve as gen­er­al con­trac­tor and sub­se­quent­ly oper­ate the facil­i­ty on behalf of the Russ­ian armed forces. 

Sim­u­la­tion-sup­port­ed train­ing is not only a real­is­tic and effi­cient means of prepar­ing troops for a vari­ety of oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios, but also keeps cost in check by reduc­ing con­sump­tion of fuel and materiel as well as pro­tect­ing heavy equip­ment from wear and tear. The Russ­ian mil­i­tary expects the new train­ing cen­tre to pay for itself with­in the space of a few years. 

Rhein­metall is tasked with devel­op­ing and sup­ply­ing the live com­bat sim­u­la­tion sys­tem as well as tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion of all aspects of the project, includ­ing com­mis­sion­ing and qual­i­ty assurance. 

Mea­sur­ing over 500 square kilo­me­tres, the state-of-the-art Russ­ian army train­ing cen­tre in Muli­no is designed to train a rein­forced mech­a­nized infantry or armoured brigade. An inno­v­a­tive rota­tion prin­ci­ple will enable train­ing to take place simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at a vari­ety of sta­tions, with the train­ing sys­tem track­ing and record­ing the activ­i­ties of each par­tic­i­pant via an elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge, help­ing to assure suc­cess­ful results through­out a train­ing process last­ing sev­er­al weeks. 

Pre­ced­ing the rota­tion prin­ci­ple, which will be employed in Muli­no for the first time, will be an intro­duc­to­ry qual­i­fi­ca­tion phase involv­ing prac­ti­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal objec­tives where­by the the­o­ret­i­cal lev­el of qual­i­fi­ca­tion pre­sent­ed in the form of CBT mod­ules. Par­tic­i­pants will not be allowed to pro­ceed until they meet this basic qual­i­fi­ca­tion, after which they move on to oth­er train­ing sta­tions, includ­ing live com­bat sim­u­la­tion, com­man­der train­ing by state-of-the-art con­struc­tive sim­u­la­tion, marks­man­ship with mod­ern fir­ing ranges as well as oth­er prac­ti­cal train­ing com­po­nents. Anoth­er new fea­ture is the net­work­ing of Live, Vir­tu­al and Con­struc­tive sim­u­la­tion ele­ments in an LVC sys­tem which promis­es to set a new stan­dard in mil­i­tary training. 

Dur­ing live com­bat sim­u­la­tion, for­ma­tions and units will soon be able to train for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions using laser sim­u­la­tors and cut­ting edge com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy mount­ed onto their orig­i­nal equip­ment and tac­ti­cal vehi­cles, which will be able to range at will in a approx­i­mate­ly 200-square-kilo­me­tre zone. Live fire will be sim­u­lat­ed by eye-safe laser sim­u­la­tors for all weapons, rang­ing from small arms and light anti­tank weapons to tank guns, artillery, IFV-mount­ed auto­mat­ic can­non, etc.. 

Fol­low­ing the train­ing pro­gramme, which lasts sev­er­al weeks, every brigade that pass­es through Muli­no will have attained a com­pa­ra­ble, cer­ti­fied lev­el of pro­fi­cien­cy. This takes into account the Russ­ian military’s aim of ensur­ing that every brigade is opti­mal­ly pre­pared for the real­i­ties of mod­ern warfare.

Real­is­tic sim­u­la­tion thanks to inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy
Con­tin­u­ous­ly per­fect­ed by Rhein­metall engi­neers, the sophis­ti­cat­ed train­ing tech­nol­o­gy installed at the GÜZ com­bat train­ing cen­tre in Let­zlin­gen, Ger­many, has proved invalu­able to the Bun­deswehr ever since oper­a­tions began in 2001. 

Dur­ing live train­ing oper­a­tions, every par­tic­i­pant in an exer­cise, from indi­vid­ual sol­diers to main bat­tle tanks is equipped from the start with laser sen­sors and com­pact data trans­mis­sion devices. 

These wire­less devices fea­ture a GPS satel­lite receiv­er and con­stant­ly trans­mit infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the posi­tion and sta­tus of every par­tic­i­pant to the exer­cise con­trol cell. When train­ing for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in urban ter­rain (MOUT), spe­cial sen­sors track the posi­tion of sol­diers even when they are inside build­ings. The effects of heavy weapons fire on build­ings and the troops inside them can also be sim­u­lat­ed. More­over, mobile video teams accom­pa­ny the par­tic­i­pat­ing units, trans­mit­ting imagery back to head­quar­ters in real time. There, the com­plete array of data from an exer­cise flows togeth­er, includ­ing all voice trans­mis­sions. The posi­tion and sta­tus of all exer­cise par­tic­i­pants are depict­ed on work­sta­tion com­put­er mon­i­tors and large screens on a 2D/3D sit­u­a­tion map, includ­ing video record­ing in real time. 

All events tak­ing place dur­ing major exer­cis­es are elec­tron­i­cal­ly record­ed and processed for sub­se­quent after-action review (they can be pre­sent­ed to exer­cise par­tic­i­pants in a fixed-posi­tion audi­to­ri­um or in mobile facil­i­ties in the major train­ing area). 

Sim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy from Rhein­metall thus makes a deci­sive con­tri­bu­tion to well-ground­ed, deploy­ment-ori­ent­ed train­ing, pro­vid­ing troops with the best-pos­si­ble prepa­ra­tion for car­ry­ing out their mis­sions, a crit­i­cal fac­tor in assur­ing ade­quate force pro­tec­tion and favourable outcomes.