Czech Republic becomes first customer for Lockheed Martin simulation centre

The Czech Republic is the first customer for the Lockheed Martin ACES system (photo of the company's Innovation Demonstration Center in Orlando, Florida). (Lockheed Martin)

The Czech Republic is the first customer for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Center for Experimentation and Simulation (ACES) system, Raashi Quattlebaum, the company's vice president for land and maritime solutions training, logistics, and simulation, said at the company's Digital Engagement Center (DEC) in Brussels on 5 June 2026. She said Lockheed Martin, working with the Czech VR Group, would provide ACES training and technical support.

With talks under way with the Swedish Ministry of Defence, Quattlebaum told Janes during a media briefing at the event that she expected the next customer to be Sweden, which will use the system to integrate training and simulation of its forces into a single platform. She added that ACES is included in the Portuguese F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) memorandum of understanding and would be used to integrate the combat aircraft into Portugal's armed forces.

Daniel Hyatt, Lockheed Martin's director and chief engineer, training, logistics, and simulation, also raised the possibility of ACES being used to upgrade the UK's Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CATT) facilities at the British Army Land Warfare Centre in Warminster in the UK and in Sennelager in Germany.

According to Lockheed Martin, ACES enables military forces to test, evaluate and train with tactics, technologies, and operational concepts through modelling and analysis of complex scenarios. Hyatt said ACES provides simulation fidelity of terrain, communications, and logistics and shows units and their logistic and supply chains. He noted that Lockheed Martin had teamed with Blackshark.ai to offer the Prepar3D Fuse simulation solution built on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5, using artificial intelligence to generate scenarios that used to take weeks to generate.