MILITARY NATO TACTICAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME AT 40
62 | http://www.airinternational.comsituations that have to be resolved inflight. It’s
all about increasing the leadership abilities of
each of the future mission commanders.”
The pressure on the pilots participating
in the course comes not just from ground
threats, but also from opposing aircraft. There
are a limited number of Red Air aircraft on
each course, which are regenerated at a faster
or slower rate so that the Blue Air pilots can
have the right level of pressure for their level
of experience. Col Villar commented: “All the
assets we have at our disposal are there, so
that the pilots being trained can achieve the
courses training objectives.”
Since mid-2016, Red Air pilots receive a
diploma for graduating as OPFOR pilots after
finishing the TLP course. Col Villar said: “This
training as adversary pilots is very popular as
of late. For this reason, procedures are being
standardised and circulated among NATO
forums so that any Red Air pilots can work
within a set of standards to provide quality
‘enemies’ for training our pilots.” Red Air
pilots conduct themselves in the same way
as the pilots of the enemy aircraft as which
they are masquerading. To achieve this, TLP
intelligence officers brief Red Air pilots on the
tactics, performance and armament of enemy
aircraft. Col Villar said: “We teach them how to
act as OPFOR and we give them a certificate
at the end accrediting them that after a
month of work they have learned the tactics
that our intelligence has learnt are used by
possible enemies. They can now train pilots in
adversary tactics.”
The TLP can count on ground units
provided by member countries, including
German Roland surface-to-air missiles,
Spanish Army and Norwegian Advanced
surface-to-air missile system batteries or theRoyal Air Force’s SAM-6. Col Villar said: “For
ground units, participation in a TLP is also
valuable. Although they are limited in using
their real-world capabilities, these exercises
provide very valuable training in teaching
procedures, practice firing etc.”
Apart from the first two days of the course,
which are devoted to academics, there are
other days set aside for classroom instruction.
On FC 2018-1, one of these additional
academic days was devoted to preparing for
an anti-surface warfare mission, during which
participants received additional information to
help in the proper planning and execution of
the mission.According to Col Villar: “We try to
give the student pilots a wide range of
missions to undertake. The work-load
for each is scalable, although there are
some very specific missions with different
connotations and difficult procedures
that have to be studied beforehand. One
cannot just undertake a CSAR mission,
for example, where there is a great
interaction between various ground
units, slow moving aircraft, etc, without
a set of clearly predefined coordination
procedures that go beyond normal day-
to-day operations. The same is also true
for naval missions.”BELOW: Thanks to the constant improvement of its
software and the integration of new capabilities,
the EF-18Ms of Ala 12 and Ala 15 continue to be
very capable aircraft when expertly flown.