The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the tragic efficacy of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the need to protect against them.

Better-protected vehicles form one part of that solution, but as armed forces — particularly the U.S. Army and Marines Corps — have discovered, they bring their own set of problems.

Raising a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle such as the Buffalo higher off the road surface to give its shaped hull and armor a better chance of defeating an IED explosion is undoubtedly effective, but the height and weight of such vehicles makes them relatively unstable and accident rates have been high.

“They have very significantly different driving characteristics, said Mark Saturno, director of business development at Cubic Corp.’s simulation division.

“With the Buffalo, for example, you have a very high and heavy vehicle. The drivers sit up high. They are susceptible to rollovers. In fact, all these vehicles are susceptible to rolling, particularly in off-road environments.”

Training drivers to be aware of this hazard is obviously important and Cubic has teamed with Thales to create a simulator that will accurately reproduce the movements of the Buffalo and other MRAP vehicles.

“We can take a single platform that’s a mission platform and cab and reconfigure that base system to replicate different vehicles by changing out the dashboards and selecting different software.”

Thales came to the project with a long pedigree of creating driver-simulation systems stretching back to the AMX-30 main battle tank of the late 1960s.

It provided the motion system for the MRAP simulator while Cubic contributed the cab and software. The two partners exhibited it for the first time at the 2009 I/ITSEC conference and exhibition in Orlando, Fla.

“We’re trying to see if we can enter the U.S. simulator market, which is huge,” said Alain Tardy, Thales’ land and energy director. “Our product was not known about in the U.S. and reaction was very, very positive. We got a lot of interest from other U.S. companies, which were very interested to see this concept of a motion system fitted to a cabin.” Discussions are ongoing.

Thales is also exploring linking several ground-vehicle simulators together, to allow multiple crews to train together and practice maneuvers as part of a battle group.

While comparing a ground-vehicle simulator with its aircraft equivalent is difficult, said Robert Alet, mechanical systems engineering manager for training and simulation activities, there are some definite differences.

If a driver feels his vehicle starting to slide or skid, the reaction required to correct that must be immediate— a reflex action — and this is something that must be taught in a simulator. “In an aircraft, you have time to correct things.”

— Alan Dron