TRAINING: CAE and L3Harris together in "mega" training deal
Canada’s multinational training business, CAE, announced this month that it is spending just over a billion dollars on buying the military training arm of L3Harris at a multiple of 13.5 - It has been described as a mega deal for the training industry.
Canada’s multinational training business, CAE, announced this month that it is spending just over a billion dollars on buying the military training arm of L3Harris at a multiple of 13.5 - It has been described as a mega deal for the training industry.
CAE’s Vice President of International Defence and Security, Marc-Olivier Sabourin (right) explained that the acquisition is very complimentary to CAE’s current operations. “In fact, all components of L3Harris, will be accelerator to our strategy, and our defence and security business So combining both portfolios, we will have an extremely good coverage of the military five main domains.”
The Middle East is a key market for CAE and Sabourin stressed that the company was already working in partnership in the region.
The Middle East region is very important for us,” he said. “If you look at the most of the countries strategies in the Middle East it is to achieve a knowledge base economy through innovation and digital transformation. And they're very much at the forefront of this. And particularly where it affects national security, which, which when you look at our strategy, in fact, it aligns very well with our vision.
“Our goal in the Middle East is to contribute to this digital transformation, and military modernization as a provider of training and operations support solutions. And we are going to do this by growing locally with a highly skilled workforce - to support the local customers with local workforce.”
Sabourin said the enlarged CAE with its L3Harris experience is other markets will see the company investing more than a billion dollars in a research and development programme called Digital intelligence, which Sabourin said will re-visualise training and mission support.
“Our vision of future actually is I much of much of the training experience, but as well as if you can push it to decision making process or strategy development, and future force development will happen in within a virtual environment or with a virtual environment to support the concept. In the UAE, we are going to create an advance R&D centre that will provide local capability that will demonstrate capability,” he said.
CAE currently has three landmark contracts, - the remotely piloted aircraft training centre in Liwa, with its innovative innovation in synthetics; the company is nearing the completion of two helicopter simulators for the UAE joint aviation command and is also developing probably the biggest synthetic comprehensive naval training centre in the world for the UAE Navy.