Brunei Air Force Pilots 'Cool' With S-70i Simulator Training

Asian Military Review was recently invited to examine the Royal Brunei Air Force’s S-70i simulator in Brunei Darussalam.

- Andrew Drwiega

Brunei, the small soverign state situated on the northern coast of the island of Borneo, is perhaps known more for its oil and gas wealth than anything else. It has a small tri-service defence force which has been going through vaious modernisation programmes including the relatively recently acquisition of 12 Sikorsky S-70i helicopters.

Replacing the Bell Helicopter 212 meant that the existing pilots needed conversion training and new pilots needed a higher level of ab initio training.

Colonel Johar Abdullah, Head of Aviation Standards and Evaluation, Brunei Royal Air Force (RBAirF), told AMR that, due to Brunei’s tropical equatorial climate with its heat and humidity, it had been challenging for both instructors and students to go through procedures and aircraft familiarisation in a real cockpit sitting on the apron at RBAirF Rimba Air Base within the Brunei International Airport.

For the last 18 months however, the RBAirF has been using a CAE 3000 Series S-70i Black Hawk helicopter simulator located at CAE Brunei’s MultiPurpose Training Centre (MPTC) to train its 24 Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawk pilots in everything from procedural techniques, through to recurrent training including night flying with night vision goggles (NVGs) for those who have experience, through to mission-specific scenarios.