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SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Jan. 29 -- Environmental Tectonics Corporation (Amex: ETC) ("ETC", the "Company") today announced the successful completion of "Orange Flag" week.
Experienced fighter pilots representing the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, NASA and ten friendly nations joined for a week in Southampton, a town north of Philadelphia, PA to exercise the revolutionary Authentic Tactical Flight Simulator (ATFS-400™). The ATFS-400 combines a realistic visual simulation of threats, terrain, weather and other elements in a tactical environment with a powerful high performance centrifuge that can be "flown" by a fighter pilot. ETC independently funded and developed the ATFS-400 technology over the past decade. During Exercise "Orange Flag", hosted last week by ETC, a series of simulated engagements were flown by the visiting pilots, pitting the F/A-18-like ATFS-400 against a non-motion MIG-29 simulator with the same virtual capability. The one-on-one Orange Flag contests immersed the pilots in a synthetic combat environment, demonstrating the capability of the ATFS-400 to create authentic tactical maneuvering experience. As one participating pilot enthusiastically observed, the Orange Flag engagements changed the question from "Does this technology work?" to "How can we put it to work?" The high realism maneuvering experience that the ATFS-400 provides will significantly add to operational readiness, safety and training cost reductions. More hands-on experience in simulated air combat situations will validate and sharpen critical skills, thus eliminating risk in such maneuvers "at the edge", which saves lives and aircraft. The baseline price of the ATFS-400 is around $25 million per system. However, preliminary estimates forecast the cost savings to the U.S. Government of up to $2 billion a year when the ATFS technology is fully deployed. ATFS-400 incorporates several proprietary advances in simulation technology. The G-POINTTM system transforms pilot control inputs to produce centrifuge motion that creates precise inertial forces - often called "G-forces" - resulting from maneuvering flight in a high performance aircraft. The proprietary modular cockpit technology enables the ATFS-400 to be configured to various types of tactical aircraft. During Orange Flag, the ATFS-400 simulated an F/A-18 aircraft. Actual in-aircraft tactical flight time is a limited and extremely expensive commodity. The ATFS-400 is the first ground-based simulator capable of authentically simulating the actual Gs that pilots experience during tactical maneuvering. The ATFS-400 technology promises to eliminate much of the airborne training risk, substantially reduce cost to develop and sustain skills, and accelerate combat pilot qualification by providing pilots needed high fidelity tactical flying experience. By training in the ATFS-400 before actual flight, the pilot can more effectively use his in-aircraft flight time to hone tactical skills to a fine edge. ETC designs, develops, installs and maintains aircrew training systems, public entertainment systems, process simulation systems, (sterilization and environmental), clinical hyperbaric systems, environmental testing and simulation systems, and related products for domestic and international customers. This press release may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the Company that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any other future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may", "will", "could", "would", "expect", "believe", "estimate", "continue", or the negative of such terms or similar expressions. Factors that might cause or contribute to such a discrepancy include, but are not limited to, contract cancellations, political unrest in customer countries, general economic conditions and those issues identified from time to time in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other public documents including, without limitation, our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 28, 2003. |
www.etctacticalflight.com/