Airforces - Typhoon school

(Jacob Rumans) #1

he’ll be offensive on me this time. I need to
recognise his nose coming onto me and when
I can regain energy and flush him out, make
him fly through – it’ll be a tough trip where I’ll
mainly be looking back over my shoulder.
“We learn a lot of the BFM [basic fighter
manoeuvres] theory at Valley, but it’s fairly
broad brush and we only scratched the
surface. We flew these types of engagements
at full power in the Hawk – we can’t do that
here! We also spent a lot of time on the
Hawk flying defensively, looking back over
the head box of the ejection seat at 5g. In
the Typhoon I’ll regularly be up at 9g.
“At the end of the Valley course you feel
sharp,” continues Phil. “You can lead a
three-ship of Hawks up to Lossiemouth,
fight on the way there, land and refuel, then
head back, simulating dropping bombs and
strafing, then land back at Valley. Coming
to the Typhoon is like a Mensa puzzle, you
have to totally recage your expectations.”


Learning the trade
The OCU course progresses with mission training
sandwiched between departing and recovering
to Coningsby, so there’s plenty of time spent


honing techniques around the home field. While
the introduction to fighting in the Typhoon may
seem to come quickly, this is all about building
on what a student has learned during earlier
phases of training. Flt Lt Craig says: “In EFT you
learn how to fly in formation and if you’re lucky
you might get to witness some tail-chasing. In
the Tucano you will have flown a tail-chasing
solo, it’s non-aggressive follow-the-leader
around the sky. At Valley that then becomes
aggressive, you will fight 1-v-1 from very canned
[constrained] academic set-ups. They teach you
that if you see a certain picture [of the hostile]
do this and you’ll see this effect. You then build
that up into 2-v-1 and so on. The pictures we
see in the Typhoon are the same, but this jet
fights in a different way so we apply different
techniques. Air-to-air fighting is fast, and we
will ultimately use the radar to get to a merge
that doesn’t come from canned parameters, so
you have to think fast. Experience is everything
and the more you do it, the more time you
have – you get used to the pace.”
During the early phases of
combat, the student pilot
cannot be expected to grasp
everything from the outset.

It’s the age-old building block approach.
“In the early combat trips we dial down
the fights to show certain pictures and free
up capacity for us,” says Flt Lt Phil. “In the
debrief we sit with the instructor and go
through every element in minute detail. There’s
a massive misconception that we just fire
missiles at each other from long range.”
Learning the art of air-to-air fighting is a
massive part of the OCU course, but it’s
the culmination of years of training. The
students will likely have just 30 hours of live
flying before they head off to the front line,
so every second in the air is precious.
The mission training in the course is modular,
so different elements can be built in as
assets allow, however, it tends to follow a
path of building up from 1-v-1, 2-v-1, attack
bombing phase into identification on radar,
into an intercept and engaged fighting.
“Some trips are building blocks for
others, and the syllabus can be adapted
to suit experience,” explains Craig. “For
example, crossover students can skip some
sorties, based on previous experience.”
It’s not just the air combat that ramps
up, there’s a host of other elements for the
new pilots to grasp, as Craig explains. “As
soon as you’ve completed the formation
element, if a tanker is available, you can go
and aerial refuel. For me, tanking was the
single scariest thing I’ve done. I’d spent
eight years learning collision avoidance, then
you go and meet a Voyager. If you don’t
hit the tanker basket you don’t get fuel.
Then we went back and did it at night!”

A Typhoon instructor pilot steps
from his jet at the end of a sortie
with a student wingman. The
instructor pool at the OCU is very
experienced, offering all the skills
required to coach new pilots.


Walking to the jets on
the busy fl ight line at
No 29 Squadron.

NEXT MONTH:
The next generation – an expanding
Typhoon Force with a bigger mission.

AFM

http://www.airforcesmonthly.com #361 APRIL 2018 // 73

Free download pdf