KIRKWOOD, NY (WIVT/WBGH) – CAE is the Greater Binghamton Chamber Business of the Week.

CAE is the world’s largest training company with 13,000 employees across 62 sites in 40 countries.

Its local facility in the Kirkwood Industrial Park employs 100 people and traces its origins back to Edwin Link who invented the first flight simulator 94 years ago.

Over the years, Link changed hands many times and was previously owned by CAE in the 80’s and 90’s.

About a year and a half ago, it bought the link division back from L3 and continues to provide simulators for the US Department of Defense.

Senior Vice President Ben Nicholson says their work is essential to national security.

Senior V.P. for Washington Operations for CAE, Ben Nicholson says, “Highly advanced modeling, training simulation equipment for the war fighter to help them prepare for the moments that matter. When you talk about someone in a cockpit performing a mission, and in fact we’ve seen it in just the last week. We’ve had these incursions into U.S. airspace and some pilots have had to make some pretty amazing missions and perform what we’re asking of them. Everyone one of those pilots has gone through some sort of training, modeling simulation that we make.”

Nicholson says the Kirkwood facility is providing training simulators for air, space, sea, land and cyber defenses.

CAE has 25 open positions to fill locally. For more information, go to CAE.com.