Held at London’s ExCel exhibition centre, ITEC 2024 provided an opportunity for BAE System to give delegates an early taste of its new digital learning environment developed under Project CanDLE intended to transform the learning ecosystem to help individuals learn.
“Today, people learn differently compared to 20 to 30 years ago. Attention spans have changed and research shows millennials or Gen X have an attention span of 12 minutes; Gen Z have an attention span of 12 seconds. So, the way new people coming through the military train must significantly change.” Lucy Walton, BAE Systems’ Air Sector Head of Training told ADM.
BAE Systems started working on Project CanDLE with a consortium of small technology companies two years ago, trying to understand the concepts of new learning technologies, and helps to turn them into capability that's relevant to customers in an integrated way. In its full form, Project CanDLE is eight months old and is available on the market.
“The system ingests any type of material, be it digital documents, presentations, video, audio, and makes virtual reality [VR] and augmented reality [AR] more accessible to a customer,” Walton added.
“Instead of having to have localised VR software and servers, you can put a VR headset on and type in a PIN number to stream the latest VR training from a secure cloud, instead of having to locally source it on hardware.”
All products being designed by BAE Systems new FalconWorks division – which is leading research and development on technologies including uncrewed aircraft and elements of the UK’s Tempest future combat air systems - are being developed for the training requirements and environment of 2035, the year the UK’s future combat air system is expected to be in operational service with the Royal Air Force.
“We've had to make training flexible, because new roles are going to come online that we need to train for, which we have not even considered yet. We're probably going to have more software engineers by the aircraft in the future, and we're going to have more human factor interfaces, and wearable cockpit technology. So, we're working with the GCAP [international Tempest fighter] team and the FCAS [UK system-of-systems] team to determine what training for the future system-of-systems operating environment will require,” Walton explained.
To date, BAE Systems has not undertaken any trial of the Project CanDLE system for the UK Ministry of Defence, but it has for its international customers. Using a classroom-of-the-future equipped with a range of technologies, the company ran a training course that historically took six weeks to complete with a 60 per cent pass rate. Using the new environment, the course was completed in two weeks with a 90 per cent pass rate.
Commenting, Lucy Walton said the results showed that people do learn in different ways and are embracing adaptive learning. “We were trialling and understanding what's the right blend between live classroom time versus time spent solely in an online environment,” she said. “Quite quickly, we noticed all the students were sailing through certain topics and struggling on one.”
In terms of the Australian market, a UK-based team recently completed a roadshow with the CanDLE product, setting up trials with the institutes aligned to BAE Systems Australia. “We're awaiting feedback on how they found the trials and what the captured data tells us. We're looking to increase trials with a broader number of users.
To date, the CanDLE product has not been procured by any defence ministry, but demonstration trials have been run, and BAE Systems is devising an innovative commercial model.