The acquisition of Training Systems is being stressed continually by the advent of requirement change. The cost and schedule impacts from such changes are felt throughout the acquisition and fielding process.

The use of FORTRAN places constraints upon the development process which limits ability to reduce the effect of requirement change. Preliminary experience with Ada¹ in the training arena shows that an Ada environment does not share the FORTRAN limits.

The paper examines the essential differences between the Ada and FORTRAN software environments in relation to both requirements change and to the introduction of generic "standard" components within Trainer Products. The concept of generic components is defined in terms to show how an Ada environment facilitates in ways a FORTRAN environment cannot.

Support software prerequisites (particularly for Training System products) are identified and are shown to be necessary to allow developers to exploit the potential within structures that are part of the Ada language.