29 June 2023

BSI launches ARMOR for MACE

by Giles Ebbutt

A screenshot of BSI's ARMOR Unity-based 3D viewer for the Modern Air Combat Environment showing radar beam shape, scan pattern, and threat zones in a ground attack scenario. (BSI)

Battlespace Simulations Inc (BSI) has developed a visualisation tool using the Unity game engine.

Augmented Reality Mission Observation and Rehearsal (ARMOR) is a Unity-based 3D viewer for BSI's Modern Air Combat Environment (MACE). BSI describes MACE as “a physics-based, full-spectrum computer-generated/semi-automated forces (CGF/SAF) application”. ARMOR is now in use with the Ukrainian armed forces.

Tom Ball, military simulation consultant at BSI, told Janes that ARMOR had started life as a “simple add-on viewer for MACE”, but it had evolved into a full-scale visualisation system for multiple use cases. He said it can be run in virtual, augmented, or mixed reality (VR/AR/MR), screen view, or multichannel modes.

Ball added that all these can be used for different use cases. For example, for mission planning, observation, and debrief, it “can provide an immersive ‘God's eye' view combined with informationally dense analysis and detail where it is needed, such as data labels, trails, threat zones, weapon engagement zones, dynamic route risk versus threat, radar beams, and jamming effects”.

Ball said aircraft mission planning tools have very limited visualisation for rehearsal and sometimes very limited analysis. Using MACE's route analysis capability, which he said was originally built for the US special operations community, route plans can be exported from mission planning software and ingested into MACE and ARMOR for analysis.

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