The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) has recently delivered to the Belgium Directorate General Material Resources – Section Land Systems a Virtual Battle Space (VBS) software for the Spike LR Anti-Tank Guided Missile. Belgium ordered Rafael’s Spike anti-tank guided missiles in 2013. The Belgian Army withdrew the MILAN from service in the early 2014. Under a 41 million contract, the Spike missiles supplied by the EuroSpike consortium, which was founded in 2004 when Rheinmetall Defence Electronics, Diehl BGT Defence and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems joined forces.
“The purpose of the project was to integrate a realistic simulation of the SPIKE weapon system into the VBS software. This will allow the SPIKE operators to train more effectively on tactical scenarios developed by the instructors.” Mr Robert Elvish, NSPA Air and Land Combat Systems Programme Manager said.
The VBS software provides a comprehensive virtual training environment for tactical training and mission rehearsal for land, sea and air. The contract was awarded in September 2021 to Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BIS), manufacturer of the VBS software. Several software iterations were released over the course of 2022, leading to the delivery of the final software package in December 2022. The final acceptance of the software by Belgium took place in the Belgian Army Simulation Center (CSim) in parallel with the instructor and operator training provided by the NSPA contractor.
Spike is an Israeli anti-tank guided missile and anti-personnel missile with a tandem-charge high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead. It was developed and designed by the Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It is available in man-portable, vehicle-launched, and helicopter-launched variants. The missile can engage and destroy targets within the line-of-sight of the launcher , and some variants can make a top attack through a “fire, observe and update” method; the operator tracking the target, or switching to another target, optically through the trailing fiber-optic wire (or RF link in the case of the vehicle-mounted, long-range NLOS variant).
