RAF expands use of Gladiator synthetic training environment

Gladiator saw success in providing training for RAF Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft crews. (UK MoD/CrownCopyright)

The UK Royal Air Force (RAF) is continuing to expand the use of its Gladiator multi-domain distributed collective training synthetic environment, including providing support to operations and to experimentation and trials.

Speaking at the Omega Joint Military Training and Simulation (JMTS) conference held in Bristol in February, Group Captain Paul Froome, Gladiator senior responsible owner, said that Gladiator provides a high fidelity, secure synthetic operational environment for team and collective training. This environment is complementary to individual platform simulators, he added. The system is commercial off the shelf and standards-based, with wider connections to international synthetic training environments, he said.

Use of Gladiator is de-risking live flying training, Gp Capt Froome said. Typhoon and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) weapons instructor courses have used Gladiator prior to live large force exercises, at a scale which is difficult to achieve with real world assets. Froome said that this has been “really effective, with some students passing who might otherwise have failed”.

Support was provided to Operation Highmast, the 2025 UK Carrier Strike Group (CSG) deployment to the Asia-Pacific region, “in a number of different places” with CSG plans tested in Gladiator. Based on the results “there were changes in how the CSG operated”, Froome said.

Gp Capt Froome identified Rivet Joint (the RAF's signals intelligence aircraft) training as a particular success, noting that Gladiator can now provide the full range of synthetic training for the platform. He added that the US Air Force (USAF) now want to use it.