Choice of aircraft, bases, to slip until end of decade
Fifteen months after an outline proposal was rejected by the European Air Chiefs group for lacking definition, the proposed 11-nation Advanced European Jet Pilot Training (AEJPT), or Eurotraining, programme remains dogged by disparate national priorities and has yet to implement even a management structure.
Programme officials expect the initiative to make its first steps with the agreement of a European Staff Requirement (ESR) during a meeting in June, but concede that aircraft and training site selections are unlikely to follow before late 2009 and that an integrated training system could take until 2020 to fully implement.
“The [AEJPT] advisory group is now moving into defining detailed requirements,” says Spanish air force Col Francisco Rincon, newly-appointed head of the programme’s steering committee.
Partner nations Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland should approve the ESR during June, he says, clearing the way for an initial memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the project’s structure and commercial arrangements to be signed by year-end.
A Phase 2 MoU will determine the programme’s procurement and delivery aspects.
Rincon told IQPC’s Military Flight Training conference in London last week that a request for quotations should be issued to potential suppliers by the end of 2007, with selections to be confirmed within around a further two years.
However, he confirms that the preparatory ESR “contains no detailed syllabi, since a platform selection has to be done before this can be developed”.
Eurotraining seeks to select two aircraft types: one to satisfy primary and basic training requirements and the other to meet advanced and lead-in fighter pilot training needs.
Aermacchi is promoting its M346 for the latter requirement, facing competition from designs including the Korea Aerospace Industries T-50 Golden Eagle, which could also receive further support in Europe under a potential agreement with EADS.
Original plans called for Eurotraining services to begin in 2010, but Rincon said the current timetable is for instructor training to begin in 2013, initial operating capability in 2015, full operating capability in 2018 and all system elements to be in place by 2020.
CRAIG HOYLE / LONDON
Source: Flight International