Red 6 partners with SNC as AR flight training system nears production

Red 6's Enhanced Visual Environment (EVE) headset, which enables an AR environment for combat flight training. (Red 6)

Red 6, a military flight training software company, and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) have announced a long-term strategic partnership. In a 9 July statement, Red 6 said that SNC would serve as a subcontractor under a USD30 million US Air Force (USAF) contract focused on “developing comprehensive airworthiness testing and evaluation plans” for Red 6's Advanced Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS) integration.

“The collaboration leverages SNC's deep expertise with military aircraft platforms … positioning both companies to deliver revolutionary flight training capabilities that can be scaled across multiple platforms,” the statement said.

ATARS origins

Red 6 was founded in 2018 to bring new technologies to military flight training. Daniel Robinson, co-founder and CEO of Red 6, told Janes on 25 July that his experiences as a Tornado fighter pilot with the UK Royal Air Force (RAF) and an F-22 exchange pilot with the USAF revealed training shortcomings in both services, including insufficient time in the air, a lack of numbers to train against, and challenges in training against relevant threats.

In 2017 Robinson began studying flight training, finding that the traditional method of flying against other pilots in aircraft was difficult, not scalable, and too expensive, he said.

Advanced simulation also falls short because “it doesn't emulate the cognitive loads that we're under when we do the job for real”, Robinson added.