Bohemia Interactive Australia (BIA), part of BAE Systems subsidiary Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), has been awarded a contract by the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) for an upgrade to VBS4: the latest standard of its virtual desktop simulation software for collective tactical and mission rehearsal training, BAE Systems announced on 21 August 2024.
The award also includes an enterprise-wide licence and supplementary development by BIA to ultimately deliver a customised simulation to the NZDF, which has also contracted BIA to develop an improved representation of the New Zealand Light Armoured Vehicle and for continued maintenance of its licence of TerraTools: a terrain generation tool used to create high-fidelity, correlated terrain for simulation.
“We are grateful for the trust the NZDF has placed in VBS for the last 15 years,” Ryan Stephenson, managing director for BIA, was quoted as saying in a BAE Systems press release. “Our commitment to deliver added value continues in our VBS4 release.
“The NZ Army’s Command and Control Systems School are real power users of simulation tools and have developed considerable expertise in leveraging simulation as a multiplier to produce training effects for their service men and women. We are proud to continue supporting them in their work,” Stephenson added.
NATO member nations such as the UK, France, Germany, and Sweden, as well as several other customers, have upgraded to VBS4, which provides major improvements over previous versions such as whole-Earth representation and a faster workflow for content generation.
More generally, BAE Systems noted that many hundreds of thousands of military personnel are trained every year using BISim’s high-fidelity VBS software products.
More than 60 NATO and NATO-friendly countries, and over 300 integrators/prime contractors, use VBS technology.
BISim’s customers include the US Army, US Marine Corps, UK Ministry of Defence, Canadian Armed Forces, French Army, Bundeswehr, Swedish Armed Forces, Australian Defence Force, New Zealand Defence Force and many major system integrators.
