MBDA France, part of MBDA Group, said it has concluded a partnership agreement with Oktal-SE, a global player in multispectral simulation. 

Since 1991, the two companies have worked collaboratively, beginning in 1991 with the synthetic image simulation for the French air-launched cruise missile, SCALP.

Oktal-SE software solution (SE-Workbench) is used by MBDA to develop infrared synthetic image generation systems for simulations that are involved in many infrared missile sensor systems development: for study, performance, man-in-the-loop, and hardware-in-the-loop.

The signed agreement comes after more than 20 years of complementary interest by the two companies in developing and improving real-time and non real-time simulations in various electromagnetic spectra–infrared, visible, laser, radar–and associated modeling technics and tools, for atmospheric, thermic and radiative computations and 3D databases. 

Both companies agreed to jointly continue to work on the evolution and validation of SE-Workbench software products on present developments and pursue mutually cooperation opportunities.

MBDA is jointly held at 37.5 percent by BAE Systems and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS), and is 25 percent owned by Finmeccanica.

French firm Oktal-SE works in multi-sensor simulation with 40 percent of its turnover achieved on the export market. The OKTAL-SE suite of commercial-off-the-shelf systems combines ray-tracing technologies with state of the art graphic-rendering techniques to enable the best in sensor simulation. The SE-Workbench suite is used both for Research and Development purposes as well as for immersive training applications.