exerciseexercise
taged twice a year, Exercise Cobra
Warrior is the final assessment phase
of the RAF’s Qualified Weapons
Instructor (QWI) course. Comprising Blue
(allied) and Red (adversary) forces, it pitches
student QWIs into complex mission scenarios,
often involving multiple aircraft flying
against enemy air and ground defences.
Managed from RAF Waddington’s Air
Battlespace Training Centre (ABTC),
Cobra Warrior is planned and run by
military and contractor personnel from the
co-located Air Warfare Centre (AWC).
For many years RAF fast jet squadrons
have included at least one QWI. These
hugely experienced and highly trained
individuals are the unit’s conduit for new
weapons techniques and tactics. They
also train their squadron mates and take
an essential role in operational planning.
Today’s slimmer RAF ironically boasts far wider
capability than ever before. This, combined with
the realisation that QWIs are equally as useful on
an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition
and reconnaissance (ISTAR) unit (as a QWI[ISR]),
for example, as they are a Typhoon squadron
(QWI), has seen this training programme expand.
And such is its quality, there’s no shortage
of allied air forces wishing to send their
QWI student equivalents to Cobra Warrior:
when AFM visited the exercise planners at
RAF Waddington last September, Luftwaffe
Tornado ECR and Eurofighter crews were
joining in from nearby RAF Coningsby.
Most participating aircraft are, however, drawn
from RAF and UK-based US Air Forces in
Europe (USAFE) units, with Waddington’s ABTC
the hub for exercise planning and execution.
Housed within an inter-war period hangar,
the ABTC looks from the outside as if it might
have been assembled for a movie shoot, butPaul E Eden visited RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, for an exclusive
oversight of last year’s second Exercise Cobra Warrior, discovering
how contractor Inzpire works within No 92 Squadron in a prime
expression of the RAF’s ‘Whole Force’ approach.S
The ABTC’s permanent establishment includes a suite of Typhoon simulators. Garry Ridsdale via InzpireInzpired
98 // JUNE 2018 #363 http://www.airforcesmonthly.comCobra Warrior