The UK Armed Forces’ Gladiator capability will connect more siloed simulator systems into its synthetic training environment.
Boeing Defence UK, the original equipment manufacturer, will provide designer support to Gladiator, enabling a wider array of simulators under a contract issued in April 2025.
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The prime first delivered Gladiator to Royal Air Force (RAF) Waddington in January 2023. The capability functions as a central hub that integrates single-purpose simulators into one virtual environment allowing operators with different roles to train together.
One month after the capability first arrived, the former Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, lauded synthetic training tools as a solution to many of the enduring pilot training issues that have emerged within the Royal Air Force, such as the longstanding backlog since the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, Gladiator serves a broader, more crucial, service in integrating simulators for training across sea, land, and air into one shared environment.
New simulators
Boeing will integrate new platforms under the latest support contract, adding various military roles to the mix: Air Command and Control, Fast Air, and Land Joint Fires platforms.
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A UK Ministry of Defence spokesperson told Airforce Technology that the specific Fast Air platforms that Boeing will integrate into Gladiator’s shared training space will include Typhoon Future Synthetic Training systems and the F-35 Effects Based Simulator.
F-35 – currently the world’s most sophisticated fighter jet – can carry all manner of weapons from Meteor, Spear 3, AMRAAM, JDAM, among others.
The platform can also accommodate new weapons such as the Joint Strike Missile, a Norwegian weapon derived from Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile. Notably, the Royal Norwegian Air Force have received their first JSM for its F-35As recently.
In addition, emerging capabilities in missiles such as hypersonics will also prove to alter the battlespace, as the US Navy lately announced progress with test firing its long-awaited Conventional Prompt Strike missile using a cold-launch method.
These technical developments demonstrate the persistent progress and maturity in weapons capabilties that digital systems, such as Gladiator, will need to replicate and accommodate in the synthetic environment.
Boeing ensures Gladiator maturity
The individual training capabilities provided by each simulator are standalone and are not impacted by the integration into the Gladiator system. It is the Gladiator system itself that will benefit from being matured further.
The contract extension will be for a period of two years and three months, with an option to extend it by six months, with an estimated value of £25m ($33m).
This follow-on contract will ensure that the Gladiator system is suitably mature and stress tested ahead of any future in-service support competition, after this proposed contract extension with Boeing expires.
