May 13, 2004 – Simulated radio communications developed by Advanced Simulation Technology inc. (ASTi) will play a vital role in the upcoming First WAVE (Warfighter Alliance in a Virtual Environment) exercise, sponsored by NATO's Research & Technology Organization (RTO). Exercise First WAVE is a multinational, distributed simulation assessment exercise linking up to 20 sites in seven countries--U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands--and will take place in September, 2004.

ASTi will work closely with NATO's Studies, Analysis and Simulation Modeling and Simulation Group (SAS-034/MSG-001) Technical Task Team at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (Mesa, AZ) to ensure successful radio environment integration. SAS-034/MSG-001 is charged with building Exercise First WAVE's massive, multinational simulation environment.

ASTi DACS and Telestra platforms, as the Technical Task Team's systems of choice, will provide the majority of the network-based communication and radio simulation for Exercise First WAVE. Multiple systems deployed across the range of participating sites allow each trainer to integrate seamlessly with ASTi's high-fidelity simulated radio environment. Using both Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and High-Level Architecture (HLA) simulation standards, the ASTi radio environment will provide real-time communication over the secure, wide-area-network.

Many of the Exercise First WAVE sites already use ASTi equipment to meet their simulation requirements. These include: the RAF Tornado GR4 simulator at Lossiemouth, Scotland; F-16 Mid-Life Update Unit Level Trainer (ULT) at Volkel AB, Netherlands; the 4-ship F-16C simulators at AFRL, Mesa, AZ; F-15C Mission Training Center (MTC) at Eglin AFB, FL; F-16 CJ MTC at Shaw AFB, SC; and various simulators at the USAF Distributed Mission Operations Center (DMOC) at Kirtland AFB, NM.

ASTi recently received new equipment orders from Thales Training & Simulation (France); IABG (Germany); and CAE, Tampa, FL (for deployment in Canada) as these countries work toward completing the exercise's infrastructure. Additional orders are expected to fulfill the remaining exercise requirements.