Austrian Army has awarded contract for live training systems from Saab

The Austrian Army has awarded defence and security company Saab a contract to provide the Austrian Army with the internationally interoperable optical code OSAG 2.0, to be used by their family of Saab DuSim live simulator systems. This new code for direct fire weapon effects simulators will strongly improve the possibility to perform multinational exercises. The code has already been selected by the armies of the Netherlands and Germany and soon other countries will follow. Multinational missions as e.g. NRF/EU-BG require multinational training capabilities in order to prepare troops in the best possible way and the OSAG 2.0 optical code has been launched to enable these exercises. Interoperability User Community An Interoperability User Community (IUC), including members from the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Finland and United Kingdom has been participating in the development of the OSAG 2.0 Standard in order to encourage training between member states. The OSAG 2.0 Standard has been used by the NATO working group UCATT for an interoperability demonstration in the Netherlands. The benefits of the OSAG 2.0 can be summarized as: -- Defined ammunition lethality and engagement effects are used between simulators also from different countries. -- The large number of simulated OSAG 2.0 ammunition types cover all IUC members existing and planned weapons and their ammunitions as well as OPFOR weapons. The simulated ammunition types also cover the needs from future possible new IUC countries. -- The simulation realism is further increased concerning e.g. air burst ammunition. -- The maximum number of exercise participants has been increased. OSAG 2.0 is also contracted and under implementation for delivery during 2011 to the German Army training centre in Altmark (GÜZ) where both the Austrian and the Netherlands armies are regularly training.