Affordable training on modern aircraft is critical to an air force. NATO Flying Training in aims to provide such tuition
Stewart Penney/CFB MOOSE JAW
As defence budgets have tightened over the past 10 years, governments and air forces have increasingly sought ways of transferring capabilities to the private sector.
Labelled in numerous ways - including contractorisation and public private partnerships - such deals have typically seen companies, or consortia, offering a guaranteed service, providing the equipment, at least some personnel and, often, managing the associated infrastructure. Governments benefit as they can reduce capital expenditure and do not need to fund equipment acquisitions. Meanwhile, the private sector receives guaranteed utilisation from a core customer and the opportunity to earn additional revenue by winning third party contracts.
Initially, most areas contracted out were maintenance and airfield services, but now significant contracts are being awarded. One such deal, linking the Canadian Government and Bombardier, is NATO Flying Training in Canada (NFTC). This began training pilots last year. Even before NFTC started operations, it had signed up Denmark, Italy, Singapore and the UK Royal Air Force as well as the Canadian Forces (CF), says George Adamson, NFTC director marketing, Bombardier Aerospace.
In the early 1990s, Canada sought a replacement for its elderly Canadair CT-114 Tutors around the same time as NATO issued a pilot training requirement. By 1997, NFTC had been launched and negotiations for equipment and with third party nations had started.
NFTC has four elements: Phase I screens ab initio students for suitability as air force pilots. This is the customer nation's responsibility, although Bombardier provides this service to the CF and can offer it to third parties.
The scheme therefore concentrates on Phases II to IV, split between the CF bases at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Cold Lake, Alberta.
Phase II at Moose Jaw is divided into two and provides the student with basic training (Phase IIA) on the Raytheon T-6 Texan turboprop-powered trainer, known in Canadian service as the CT-156 Harvard. At the end of Phase IIA, students are streamed for fast jet, rotary wing and multi-engine aircraft. Those selected for fast jets begin Phase IIB advanced training, also on the Harvard, before graduating to the BAE Systems Hawk lead-in fighter trainer, theCT-115, in Phase III. On completion, students move to CFB Cold Lake for Phase IV tactical training, also on the Hawk. Once Phase IV is finished, the student will return home for operational conversion training. Cold Lake is the base for Phase IV as it gives access to the adjacent 700,000km² (1,295,000nm²) tactical training area.
Students selected for rotary wing and larger fixed wing aircraft leave Moose Jaw for Phase III Helicopters and Phase III Multi Engine, respectively. Bombardier operates these courses for the CF.
Company investment
Bombardier has invested around C$770 million ($510 million) and provides the aircraft (although they are certificated and registered by the CF), ground school instructors, maintenance and support personnel, CAE-built synthetic training devices and the school buildings at the two bases. It also operates CFB Moose Jaw, with the aid of other companies including ATCO Frontec, CAE and Serco. Adamson says NFTC has orders for 24 Harvards and 19 Hawks. It has options for additional aircraft.
As well as students, participating air forces provide qualified flying instructors (QFIs). Adamson says having military instructors, syllabi and standards, as well as locating the schools on CF bases, instills military ethos from initial basic training, which would not be the case if a purely civilian school was used. He adds that NFTC has taken the "Canadian training philosophy" and aims to create a "thinking pilot, with well-developed situation awareness". He adds: "We emphasise airmanship, systems operation and developing decision making as well as flying skills." Standards are overseen by the CF Central Flying School. Participating nations are not required to commit to all phases - the UK, for instance, will send seven instructors and 20 students a year for Phase IV only.
Lt Col Marcel Major, commanding officer, 2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School (2 CFFTS) - the unit that provides the CF's QFIs - says NFTC saves money because previously students have performed most tactical training on the Boeing CF-18 Hornet fighter, which is significantly more expensive to operate than the Hawk. Similarly, he adds, conducting some advanced training on the Harvard is cheaper than on the Hawk. As well as being more expensive, using the CF-18 for tactical training was consuming valuable airframe hours.
Lt Col Steve Hill, commanding officer 419 Squadron, which conducts Phase IV training, says the Hawk also gives the student experience of a head-up display, hands-on-throttle-and-stick controls and a glass cockpit before they learn to fly frontline fighters. Although the Hawk could be armed, no live firing is included in the course. Instead, so-called no-drop scoring will be used to assess a student's ability to use the weapon system. "We're exercising their ability to put the X on the spot, rather than the ability to drop a weapon," says Hill. An air combat manoeuvring instrumentation system that does not require ground based towers will also be used during Phase IV to provide debrief data.
Major and Hill both stress the importance of simulation in the training process as it allows the maximum training value to be achieved per flying hour. The student gains a better idea of what switches to operate in which order and will get a general feel for what he will experience in the air. Synthetic training aids range from providing a laptop computer to every student (pre-installed with all the necessary ground school coursework) through to fixed base simulators. Three Harvard and one Hawk simulator are at Moose Jaw with an additional Hawk device at Cold Lake. Fixed base simulators are preferred because a full motion system cannot be used for practising aerobatics.
The first three student classes began training last year and the first pupils are due to graduate from Phase III and start Phase IV in April.
At the same time, Bombardier is seeking to expand NFTC. It ordered the nineteenth Hawk in November last year and Zev Rosenzweig, vice-president aviation training, Bombardier Aerospace Defence Services, says six more could be added in the near term, alongside another one or two Harvards. He expects to sign letters of intent in the early part of this year with two or three more air arms. Sweden and the UK Royal Navy have held talks. The latter was interested in Phases II to IV, but it is understood that it will probably sign for the Hawk stages only, relying on the Royal Air Force to provide basic training on its Shorts Tucanos. A host of other European countries, including Finland, France and Switzerland, have considered NFTC and Germany is sending an instructor.
Exporting the concept
Rosenzweig says Bombardier has looked at exporting the NFTC concept to other areas and considered "how it would want to partner with local industry [in those areas]". Asia and South America could be targeted with a modified concept that better suits air forces without fourth generation fighters.
John Cockburn, BAE Systems NFTC programme director, says one advantage of NFTC is that a pilot can be trained for a fixed cost. In addition, he says, if a student fails early on in the course, a nation does not pay for the remainder. An air force with its own training system would still have to pay personnel and base overheads. Indeed, a UK National Audit Office (NAO) report, Training New Pilots, criticised the UK Ministry of Defence for not having good figures for calculating pilot training costs. Rosenzweig says the CF will save C$200 million (in 1998 dollars) over the 20-year life of the NFTC programme. One source says NFTC costs less than half the £3.8 million ($5.6 million) that the NAO calculates as the cost of training an RAF pilot.
Although he acknowledges that NFTC has not reached profitability ahead of its first students gaining their wings and that there were problems during the start-up - for instance, the Harvards were grounded at one stage following a US Air Force T-6 accident and problems with an engine oil-cooler - Rosenzweig says "it will not be long" before the scheme is in the black.
Countries no longer have a critical mass of trainee pilots to allow the creation of national training systems. Air forces are now smaller and require fewer pilots to be trained. In addition, many trainer fleets are ageing and are not equipped with the systems of new frontline fighters. NFTC aims to provide affordable training on aircraft with such systems, he says.
Source: Flight International
