countries now taking advantage. Two
years ago, the CBT program began its
‘special events’, which included F-15
Eagle formations from RAF Lakenheath,
England, taking part in a CBT sortie in
the north before returning home. ‘The
US Air Force participated in the rst ACE’,
‘Restless says, ‘and saw the advantages
of the big airspace and the possibility to
train with many ghters on a day-to-day
basis. They said, ‘Hey, we want to chip
in on this’, which is why we created the
‘special event’.’
What w as a priority yesterday may not
be so critical today, and this can be seen
in the ever-evolving CBT. ‘We have been
very focused on international typesof missions here’, continues ‘Restless’,
‘which means peace support and peace
enforcement operations, and ACE has
these kinds of scenarios. I think that
most of the air forces around the world
are now looking back to basics, which
means national defense is once more on
the agenda.
‘We’ve been trying to implement a
little bit more of a national scenario,
with a high-threat environment. A
couple of years ago we mostly trained
against a medium-level threat, but now
we’re more focused on a high-threat
environment, so we need to go in [at
low altitude] — we can’t go mid-level
any more.’Changing the focus from international
to more national-oriented operations, but
still keeping the international readiness,
involves a ne balance. The combination
of CBT and ACE seems to be key for
the Nordic countries, as ‘Restless’ says:
‘We need to continuously improve CBT.
When we launched CBT on a really large
scale, we had 65 occasions a year. There’s
actually a reduction now, and this year
we only have 40. That’s because when
something is new everyone is eager. But
it also takes a lot of resources to plan and
adapt to the di erent situations, both for
the squadrons and from a political side.
‘We’re looking at the bilateral meet-
up di erently than we did ve or six
years ago. Now we can do a lot of good
stu with them. Instead of doing basic
BVR [beyond visual range] set-ups, we
can actually bring in scenarios where
four adversaries are ample to ful l our
goals. Earlier we just looked at large-
scale scenarios all the time — it’s still
interesting, and we still need to train
it, but not on the same scale as before.
The smaller scenarios are equally
useful for us.’
In combination with ACE, this keeps
the squadrons at a high level of
readiness and interoperability with other
units. In Turula’s words, ‘We are training
to be interoperable with NATO, as we’re
not part of NATO, but come under
the NATO Partnership for Peace. WithAbove: The Arctic
Fighter Meet is a
great opportunity
to maintain the
strong bond
between the
Nordic air forces.
Above left:
Finland’s Hawks
are all attached
to the Training
Academy at
Tikkakoski.98 April 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
EXERCISE REPORT // CROSS-BORDER TRAINING
94-99 Cross Border Training C.indd 98 16/02/2018 10:14