Israel Tests Thrust Pod for Combat Helicopter Training

Israel Aerospace Industries has expanded its Ehud family of embedded training systems to allow the equipment to be used by attack helicopters and Soviet-era and Russian-built combat aircraft.

Named Thrust, the company's helicopter rehearsal autonomous safety and training system was recently used during a large-scale exercise involving hundreds of participants, including rotorcraft, air defence aircraft, tanks and other land vehicles.

The Thrust equipment allows attack helicopters to use virtual armaments against ground targets, with enhanced debriefing capabilities to allow the reconstruction of all flight data and synchronisation of audio and video data. The system also provides enhanced safety capabilities, including air collision and obstacle avoidance, during operations.

A pod-based design is available for use primarily with the Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter (above), with an internally carried version also being offered for other combat and utility helicopters.

Meanwhile, the company has developed a version of its Ehud autonomous air combat manoeuvring instrumentation equipment that can be housed within a dummy Vympel R-73 air-to-air missile. IAI has previously also produced versions of the system to fit within a Raytheon AIM-9L Sidewinder shape.