Times are changing and, in the twelve months or so since our last visit, RAF Valley has certainly undergone a great deal of alteration. New buildings, new squadron compositions and a move towards a major change in the way the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy trains its prospective fast jet pilots.
Just a few weeks ago 19(R) Squadron ceased to exist as the Tactical Weapons Unit at Valley and 208(R) Squadron is now the Station’s sole operator of the BAE Systems Hawk T.1. The vast majority of 19’s instructors are now fully badged members of 208 and have moved in to its building. So, for the time being at least, all AFT (Advanced Flying Training) and TW (Tactical Weapons) flying will be carried out by 208(R) Squadron.
A little way further down the line at Valley you’ll find 19’s former home, now lying as empty as the ramp which adjoins it, the vast majority of aircraft being operated from directly outside (or at least close nearby) the 208 building, and the large, brand new structure which dominates proceedings and is just a short walk away across the tarmac.
This is the Moran Building and it is the main reason why RAF Valley has changed the way it goes about its flight training business and will do so again when 4 FTS eventually retires the Hawk T.1.
Named in honour of Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Moran, Commander in Chief (CinC) of Royal Air Force Air Command, who sadly died in May 2010 shortly after visiting RAF Valley and viewing the facility, the Moran Building is now home to 19(R) Squadron and the Hawk T.2. UK Military Flying Training System (MFTS) worked alongside personnel from RAF Valley to commission the facility which was officially opened by the late CinC’s wife and children in December last year.
Mark Simmonds from Ascent, himself a former RAF fast jet pilot who, not so long ago, was an instructor on 208(R) Squadron, was kind enough to grant GAR a tour of the Moran Building as part of our recent visit to RAF Valley. Ascent (a 50/50 venture between Lockheed Martin and Babcock) is a Public Private Partnership which combines Ascent, The Directorate of Flying Training for No 22 (Training) Group and the UKMFTS IPT (Integrated Project Team) from the MoD. A 25 year contract is in place to deliver flying training.
Plenty of memorabilia from around 19(R) Squadron and the Station has also been moved in to the building to serve as a reminder to students of the history behind the unit and also provide a military feel to what is, most would agree, still a very shiny and sterile environment – something that will undoubtedly change once courses are up and running and there are more people around. Indeed, Mark is keen to point out that since we visited 19 Sqn, the occupancy within the Moran building has expanded significantly (including seven new instructors on the latest QFI course as well as the BAE/Babcock engineers/ground crew) and is certainly less sterile than it was.
After a quick chat over the background to T.2 and the Moran Building, Mark leads us down the first corridor of 19(R) Sqn’s very large, very modern and hugely technological new home. The classrooms the students will use feature PCs on every desk and are light and airy, ideal for learning and studying. It’s similar elsewhere too and other spaces, such as the aircrew locker room and flight planning, have the same feel – plenty of space and plenty of natural light wherever possible. At the end of this corridor are the rooms from which the T.2’s engineering will be managed as well.
Flight planning will be carried out largely by computer and the T.2 includes a data brick, similar to that carried by the Eurofighter Typhoon, for transferring information inputted on the ground, directly in to the aircraft. So for example, students will plan a route on one of the PCs in flight planning, insert the brick when they walk to the aircraft and the route will appear in the T.2’s inertial navigation system. This same brick can then be removed post-sortie and plugged directly in to one of the stations installed in all the debriefing rooms, allowing video of the trip to be viewed and analysed almost immediately; a vital training aid.
Having taken a look at the ops desk, occupied by two 19(R) Sqn pilots who have literally just taxied in after a sortie, we head upstairs for the first time. At the top of the staircase is the aforementioned 19(R) Squadron board, showing details of its Commanding Officer and staff. It’s currently relatively bare but there is now a core team of RAF QFIs (Qualified Flying Instructors) and also a course, for additional QFIs, going through training as we speak.
By the time we reach November, when the first course of ab initio students is due to begin training on the T.2 direct from the Tucano, 19(R) will be made up of three flights. A Flight will teach the conversion to the aircraft (Legacy 208 Sqn), 1-v-1 BFM (Basic Fighter Manoeuvres) and academic air-to-ground range procedures. B Flight will then teach the rest while C Flight, which is already operating, looks after QFI training and instructor work-up.
Upstairs we see more briefing rooms, office space for staff and also the crewroom, with lockers already installed for the laptop (Personal Learning Device or PLD) each student will receive while training and a balcony overlooking the T.2 line – useful for when the sun is shining at Valley, as it was on the day of our visit and apparently on one or two other occasions annually!
It’s seems unlikely however that students will have too much time for sunning themselves and this becomes even more apparent when we head downstairs once more to take a look at the rooms which form the core of their hands-on training – the simulators.
With ground school complete the students will move on to synthetic training before actually getting their hands on the aircraft and there will be not one, not two, but three different levels of simulation available to them. We were fortunate enough to see them all.
First is the DTT or Desk Top Trainer, ten of which sit in a custom designed classroom on the Moran Building’s ground floor. The DTT looks very much like a top end consumer flight simulator although the Hawk T.2 throttle and stick top attached to each desk in front of the large touch-screen monitor would probably propel this beyond most consumers’ budget.
The touch-screen enables the user to activate any button in the T.2 cockpit and the DTT will be used predominantly for teaching and practicing emergency procedures, cockpit layout familiarity and some general handling. Students will be able to dock their PLD to the DTT for joined up learning and even fly the simulation on the same device, although they will also be able use the DTT in their own spare time when availability allows.
After the DTT, students will move next door and on to the FTD (Flying Training Device) of which there are six, some of which were in use at the time of our visit. The FTD is, like DTT, produced by Lockheed Martin, and essentially comprises a full T.2 cockpit and a three screen display which delivers a much wider view of the outside world. A fourth screen represents the main cockpit panel and is, as on the DTT, touch-screen enabled.
This system allows the student pilots to practise checks and procedures as well as rehearsing missions in a realistic synthetic environment that covers the majority of UK airspace and airfields. Two or more FTDs can also be linked for live formation training and the graphical content is superb.
Finally, at the end of the corridor and on the other side of the building, just opposite a very well equipped gymnasium, are the FMS or Full Mission Simulators. Canadian training solutions provider CAE has manufactured these two synthetic aids and each utilises a domed visual display with fully immersive projection, together with G cueing systems to provide realistic training for the student pilot. We were able to enter the dome with the FMS positioned at RAF Valley and the level of realism afforded by the graphics, coupled with the near 360° view, was almost jaw droppingly good.
Add to that the ability for pilots to train against a multitude of other synthetically generated aircraft and you can see why, in time, the FMS will provide the majority of operational scenario based training for students, including simulation of synthetic radar, surface to air missiles, air to air missiles and decoy systems.
But what of the aircraft itself? Flt Lt Paul Heasman was one of the half dozen RAF QFIs chosen to bring the T.2 into service and prepare the syllabus that will be used for training. The former Tornado F.3 pilot, now with 19(R) Sqn of course, is keen to emphasise just what a huge change the T.2’s introduction signifies.
“Hawk T.2 builds on the success of the T.1, there is no doubt about that – 100% of that success has been transferred across to the new aircraft if you like. But, while it’s called a Hawk and it looks a bit like a Hawk, this really is a brand new platform we are talking about, and my understanding is that there is actually only one shared component – the canopy.”
While no one could disagree with Paul’s assertion that the T.2 does indeed look a little like the T.1, a peek in to the cockpit tells you all need to know about why this new asset is going to make such a difference.
“If you use Typhoon as the standard output for students completing the 19(R) course then the benefits are clear. The T.2 has a full glass cockpit, head up display and three multi-function displays – just like Typhoon. If you look at the cockpit of the Hawk T.1 it is much more like the kind of layout you would have seen in a Harrier GR.3 or Tornado GR.1 – in other words no longer representative of our front line aircraft. What T.2 does is enable us to ensure that we don’t have a training capability gap.
“These days we are training men and women to become mission systems managers, they have to be able to operate their aircraft much more than simply fly them. Of course we won’t stop teaching all the skills that they’ll need as pilots, but the Tac Weapons element of their training will be totally different.
“We’ve worked very closely with 29(R) Sqn, the Typhoon Operational Conversion Unit while putting the syllabus together. We were able to go the OCU and say to them ‘how do you do it?’, ‘what would you like us to do on 19(R)?’ – the huge benefit being that we can download training from their syllabus and do exactly the same thing on the T.2’s synthetic radar. It is worth noting that we have also worked closely with XV(R) Sqn, the Tornado GR.4 OCU, to incorporate elements from there in to the relevant sections of the syllabus.”
You don’t need to be an expert in flying training to see the clear benefits here. Students successfully completing the courses at RAF Valley will move on to the OCU far better equipped to operate the likes of Typhoon and, in the future JSF. For the OCU it potentially opens up the option of streamlining elements of its training or even allowing operational squadrons to give new pilots Combat Ready status more quickly than they can at present.
The incredible success story that is the Hawk is clearly set to continue leading the way in advanced flying training and, well beyond the T.1s retirement from 4 FTS, will remain a familiar site at RAF Valley for many years to come, with the UK’s future combat pilots on board.
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