OSIRIS Simulation System at Heart of New Capability
Armasuisse has awarded Rheinmetall a contract to supply a new command simulator to train the nation’s military leaders, the company announced on 12 March.
The Swiss General Staff School in Kriens, which will be home to the new simulators, has long been a user of simulation-based technologies to school Swiss Army officers in every aspect of military leadership. The new capability, which combines the command, control and intelligence (C2I) and peripheral systems with the newly structured OSIRIS simulation system, will allow military commanders and staff officers at both operational and tactical levels to sharpen their leadership and situation management skills, including in cooperation with federal, cantonal and local-level civilian officials – a significant consideration in the current security environment.
One of the procurement criteria was a significant reduction in the number of operating personnel required to run the system. This proved possible thanks to the OSIRIS software, which is designed to enable maximum automation. Rheinmetall will operate and maintain the system throughout its service life, establishing a ‘material excellence centre’ in order to facilitate this.
OSIRIS makes possible inter-disciplinary models that enable the depiction of training at tactical and operational levels – on land, at sea and in the air – including related capabilities.
The system can generate highly realistic leadership scenarios ranging from disaster relief to national defence and peacekeeping missions, specifically tailored to real-world Swiss requirements and current operational planning. Civilian officials at federal, cantonal and local level can also be brought into these scenarios. This enhances even further the value of simulator-supported staff exercises.
The command simulator can be operated at various echelons of Switzerland’s military hierarchy, with highly automated control possible at levels ranging from individual entities all the way up to brigade level. Here, OSIRIS supports the simultaneous entry of aggregate orders at multiple levels, thus assuring maximum freedom when controlling simulated entities and simultaneously enabling a broad range of training levels.
