Collins Aerospace announced today at the Farnborough International Airshow the U.S. Air Force has established the P6CTS as its official Program of Record and selected the Collins Aerospace Tactical Combat Training System – Increment II (TCTS II) as its preferred solution. This selection was the result of USAF evaluation of TCTS II’s growth capacity to meet all USAF future Air Combat Training requirements while remaining fully interoperable with U.S. Navy’s TCTS II. The newly created P6 CTS Program has been funded to replace 100 percent of the legacy combat training systems at an estimated 55 USAF training ranges. The P6CTS program leverages the recently awarded Navy TCTS II program to achieve economies of scale resulting from existing training enhancements and common logistics throughout the program life cycle. The USAF’s stated priority is to integrate P6CTS on fighter aircraft followed by trainer, bomber, cargo, and other platforms.
P6 CTS provides a growth path to more realistically emulate contested/congested environments thanks to its Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) training enhancements and Synthetic Inject to Live (SITL) capability. Because P6 CTS also includes multiple-individual-level security (MILS) encryption – which allows full-fidelity threats and weapon simulation sharing between platforms with varying security levels – the USAF can eliminate the need for costly platform-specific embedded training apps. TCTS II has successfully demonstrated secure blended LVC enabling capabilities during NAVAIR’s Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX-21 and ANTX-22). Initial Operating Capability (IOC) is scheduled at NAS Fallon in late 2022 with Full Rate Production (FRP) starting in early 2023. The TCTS II is envisioned to be available to both adversary air (AdAir) providers as well as foreign military partners subject to DOS exportability determination of critical TCTS II technologies.
Developed and built by Collins and teammate Leonardo DRS, TCTS II/P6CTS is a scalable and flexible open architecture system that enables highly secure air combat training between the U.S. and international aircraft, including 5th and 4th generation platforms. Collins Aerospace is showcasing the new TCTS II/P6CTS pod and a notional form-factor for F-35 at the 2022 Farnborough International Airshow at the Raytheon Technologies Pavilion. Collins Aerospace, a Raytheon Technologies business, is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Collins Aerospace has the extensive capabilities, comprehensive portfolio and broad expertise to solve customers’ toughest challenges and to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global market.
Collins Aerospace and DRS both use modular manufacturing facilities to meet production output requirements as the user and schedule needs. This means that we have the capacity to manufacture these capabilities into 1000 external subsystems, 1,800 internal mount subsystems, and 55 ground systems over a 36 month period – all while still meeting our NAVAIR TCTS Inc II production capacity requirements. The only fully certified, range proven, Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) architecture embedded in both airborne (form factors to support any platform – 4th/5th gen, pod/internal mount/rack mount) and ground (fixed, transportable) subsystems, allowing for secure real-time tethered and autonomous operations. Open systems architecture incorporating Open Group FACE™ and industry interface standards (HLA, TENA, DIS, Gigabit Ethernet) that lends itself to interfacing with a variety of current and future debrief and live monitoring systems. GPS denied accuracy during jamming with anti-spoof SAASM GPS receiver upgradeable to M-Code.
