CAE’s relationship with Germany spans 65 years, starting with F‑104 Starfighter simulators for the Luftwaffe. Today, CAE is a trusted partner to the Bundeswehr, supporting a highly ready military. A recent conversation with Thibaut Trancart, VP, Domestic Markets, CAE Defense & Security and General Manager for Germany, describes how CAE supports Germany and allied nations in addressing evolving defence needs.
How does training and simulation support NATO readiness?
Trancart: Military readiness is key to modern defence discussions, with training and simulation playing a critical role. As platforms become more advanced and interconnected, operational success depends on human performance as much as technology. Skills such as situational awareness, teamwork, and rapid decision-making must be continuously developed through realistic training. Today’s missions span multiple domains and recreating that complexity through live training alone is expensive and often carries inherent risk due to its visibility and exposure. Synthetic training on simulators enables training in realistic, shared environments that improve coordination, safety, and interoperability while making better use of limited resources to help turn capability into real‑world readiness.
Why should training figure into military asset purchasing decisions?
Trancart: Platforms alone don’t deliver readiness. As systems become more advanced, preparing crews to operate effectively in complex, multi-domain environments is critical. Today, readiness depends on judgement, situational awareness, teamwork, and decision‑making under pressure. As a trusted partner to defence forces, CAE delivers mission readiness through integrated multi-domain training and simulation, working agnostically across platforms. Rather than being treated as a afterthought, training and readiness should drive military asset decisions. Programs such as CAE’s longstanding Initial Flight Training Deutschland (IFTD) and the upcoming NATO Next Generation Rotorcraft Capabilities (NGRC) initiative, show the value of embedding training requirements from the outset, ensuring forces can generate and sustain readiness throughout the life of the platform.
What is critical to understand about pilot training?
Trancart: Training is often seen as an output, but it’s really the foundation. CAE has decades of experience in pilot training, and we’re building on that heritage with AI‑enabled, adaptive learning, and immersive tools such as AR and VR to make training more effective and efficient. CAE is evolving its training delivery models through enhanced content creation, trainee management, and analytics, giving instructors more powerful tools to develop highly trained, mission‑ready personnel. Our expertise is rooted in decades of pilot training that extends naturally to crew training and, increasingly, to joint and multi-domain coalition training. While pilot training is the starting point, well‑trained personnel are central to effective deterrence, reinforcing NATO’s position by ensuring forces can operate together seamlessly, confidently and respond rapidly in complex, multi‑domain environments.
Why is integrating LVC training increasingly important?
Trancart: There is a widening readiness gap where defence forces face hypercomplex, high-threat battlefield environments, but do not have the opportunity to train in them. CAE’s global leadership in training, modelling and simulation, and live flight training, combined with our engineering expertise in LVC planning and rehearsal across all domains, are a strategic asset in advancing global security. As defence forces face unprecedented readiness challenges, CAE’s broad capabilities can help train NATO allies to effectively train as they will fight.
CAE GmbH has a hub in Stolberg and employs over 500 people across more
than 10 sites in Germany. CAE delivers advanced flight simulators, missiontraining systems, and integrated training solutions tailored to operational requirements. For information on CAE in Germany
