Excalibur Nov_Dec 2011 Issue Part 1 - RFCA

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UNIT ARTICLES 22 JFACTSU Liaising with the Ground commander is key For a small unit, about 25 personnel from all 3 Services, those people at JFACTSU create a lot of racket! It’s normally in the form of aircraft overhead RAF Leeming as the students on the ground are training for their deployment role as Forward Air Controllers (FAC) – individuals now so valued in Afghanistan that any soldier is reluctant to step outside their Camp without a FAC ‘watching their back’. RAF Leeming is the only place in the UK where these individuals are trained. It is one of only 12 internationally accredited places in the world where these skills are taught – with 5 of those being at US schoolhouses. So what’s new with that noisy lot from JFACTSU…… Forward Air Controller Course…New Forward Operating Bases Freezing cold and soaking one moment, then boiling hot and bathed in sunshine the next. The constant are the flies and bugs. For those who aren’t aware this is a pretty standard day while in the field at RAF Spadeadam, 2 hours drive north west of Leeming. The terrain and the weather combine to provide the perfect conditions in which to test all who have successfully made it to the culmination of the Forward Air Controllers (Certified and Qualified) Course – The Student TACPs liaise with their commanders in the JFIC Exercise FINAL THUNDER. Since ‘Final Thunder’s’ inception we have been heavily supported by assets on and off station, in particular 10 Field Sqn RE who, under extremely taxing conditions, built a Forward Operating Base for us to live and work out of. As always, 100 Sqn also give us essential air support during our final exercise, with the weather often providing an extra challenge for the aircraft as well as the students. The overriding aim of ‘Final Thunder’ is to get the students to control air platforms, both rotary and fixed wing, while on foot, vehicle-borne and under large amounts of pressure. The most effective way to achieve all of this is to put them under blank fire conditions, add external factors such as mortars, artillery, and UAVs, then finally tell them to stick like glue to a ground commander who LOVES to RUN!!! Not all pass ‘Final Thunder’, but those that do know that it is the most testing and also the most rewarding part of FAC training. Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) & Supervisory Forward Air Controller (SupFAC) Course…New Courses A British TACP is a 4 man-team capable of coordinating and integrating air and ground assets New FOBs New Courses New toys! seamlessly in time and space at multiple locations in order to achieve the maximum effect on the target. They are the specialist air advisors to an Army or Royal Marines Commanding Officer. RAF Leeming is the only place in the UK where British TACP personnel are trained; no other NATO nation currently offers this level of training for their personnel. For years TACP personnel have been crying out for some form of formal training above and beyond that of their Basic FAC cse. JFACTSU have answered the call and now proudly present the new TACP course. Effectively using the time allocated to train SupFACs, the course combines new TACP students and experienced FACs (potential SupFACs) on a course designed to teach both TACP personnel and Brigade SupFACs the nature of their new job. Both groups of personnel attend the first 2 week TACP module where they revise past procedures and learn the intricacies of Airspace Management, both from doctrine and what’s happening in Afghanistan at the moment. Coupled with briefs from recently returned Royal Artillery Battery Commanders, TACP and Air Staff, the students get a good grasp of what’s expected of them on operations and how they fit in to the Battlegroup. All this prepares them for the TACP simulator which is a real advancement in terms of TACP training. They are subjected to the orders and planning process throughout the day and then they execute the mission
A student puts down covering fire as the JTAC manoeuvres to get “eyes-on” the tgt in the “simulated environment” where any faults in their plan or their procedures quickly come to light. Not satisfied with testing them on “our own turf”, the students then move to the ABTC at RAF Waddington – one of the most challenging Joint Fires computer simulation facilities in the world. Here they are put through their paces by independent staff in a state-ofthe-art simulator as they learn to work in the Jt Fires and ISTAR cell they’ll have on operations. The new TACP course really does give the students a fighting chance to keep their head above water on return to their Brigades. Many TACP personnel deploy straight onto Mission Specific Training in advance of deployment or on operations on completion of the course; the room for error is small indeed Synthetics …New Toys From 2008 to 2011 JFACTSU has changed the way forward air controlling is taught through computer based simulation. Pre 2008, students started by standing around a table top sand model with a hawk on a stick and then progressed to a television displaying a picture from a camera being “flown” across a sand model. We still use the hawk on a stick, but JFACTSU now has two computer based simulators: the Forward Air Controller Trainer (FACT) and the Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2) Suite. Students practice their techniques in the simulator and then conduct close air support (CAS) for real with live aircraft. This saves many flying hours as the students have made their basic errors in the simulators before talking to the real aircraft. The FACT was introduced to JFACTSU in 2008. It is a computer based sim where the student is immersed in the virtual world by means of head mounted display. This display tracks the head movements and allows the student a 360° view of the environment. This affords us the ability to conduct Type 1 controls where the FAC needs to track the aircraft into the weapon release point. The aircraft drop weapons that create realistic effects o n the The DS monitor and control the input to student TACPs targets, so the FAC can give a good assessment of the damage to the pilot. The FACT is a simple system that allows single aircraft to be flown either by a real pilot on a laptop or simple entities created by the computers that fly but cannot react dynamically like a real pilot can. The new VBS2 sim is used for battlespace management and operational scenarios training. It is what is known as a “serious game”. The FACs uses this facility for their advanced training including: full motion video controlling, airspace management, precision weapons training, rotary-wing CAS and convoy support and urban CAS. The sim has a huge, accurate, database of current operational environments including maps of Afghanistan and Iraq. It enables any number of ‘intelligent’ entities A moving JTAC quickly learns it’s harder to control a jet onthe-go than on the hill! including multiple people, vehicles and aircraft to be present in any one scenario. It is all run on normal computers and is therefore very cheap compared to training with live aircraft. It allows us to train skills that cannot usually be trained in peacetime. JFACTSU can train a team of FACs and Tactical Air Control Party simultaneously. The TACP sit in an ops room with multiple monitors capable of receiving downlinks from aircraft targeting pods and displaying airspace management tools. They chat using the text chat system to other organisations in theatre (simulated by the JFACTSU instructors) and VOIP radio comms to all players. The FAC on the ground sits in front of an 86” projected display of the operational area and is treated to immersive surround sound. The sim allows the instructors to emulate all patterns of life from angry crowds and barking dogs to call to prayers. Instructors may insert and control any entity in the scenario allowing them to torment trainees with torrents of incoming fire and other inputs. Most FAC students report the step up from the FACT to VBS2 as very realistic and immersive experience indeed. UNIT ARTICLES 23
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Page 6 and 7: 6 Surveyors, Auctioneers, Valuers,
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Page 16 and 17: UNIT ARTICLES 16 90 SU - RIAT 2011
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Excalibur Nov_Dec 2011 Issue Part 1 - RFCA

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