RAAF FCI Course Demands Only The Best

They can fly and fight by instinct, and do it inverted, looking at their wingman over their shoulder while travelling at somewhere near the speed of sound through a three dimensional battle zone. More importantly, they are about to spend the remaining six or so years of their pilot careers coaching the next generation of Australia’s front line fighter pilots in the finer points of aerial warfare.

The eight students on this Fighter Combat Instructors course were hand picked from the RAAF’s three operational F-18 squadrons. Among the small and elite fighter force, it is an honour simply to be chosen, because each student has already passed an exhaustive selection to get this far. Usually they were in the top three or four in their class during initial pilot training. Each has four or five years on fighters and they are all in their second tour of duty in a squadron. Each has about 1200 hours flying experience, including at least800 in fighter aircraft. They are all under 30 years of age and their lives are totally devoted to flying.

To graduate as an FCI, they must pass every stage of the16 week course, the average student working 12 to14 hours a day, six daysa week for a full four months. Usually six of the eight starters get to wear the light blue shoulder patch of an FCI. The pass rate is high because the air force cannot afford to gamble on students who might, or might not, be good enough. By the time the course arrives at RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory, three months into the curriculum, there are only seven survivors.

“The student must cover the systems and all the abilities of the aircraft,” says Squadron Leader Brent Crowhurst, Executive Officer of the RAAF’s No2 Operational Conversion Unit. This is his fifth FCI course in nine years as a QFI, or Qualified Flying Instructor. The first five weeks are consumed in teaching the students how to teach others from the back seat of an aircraft. For the next four weeks, they learn air to air warfare – building from basics to complex tactical manoeuvres against single and multiple ‘enemy’ aircraft. Students then go on to learn air to surface combat tactics and maritime strike, in keeping with the F-18’s multiple role in the RAAF as a fighter, strike and close air support aircraft. For the final three weeks of the course, the pilots combine, practise and refine all the skills they have learned so far but in a gradually escalating combat environment.

“Initially, it’s The Course in support of the Army, the Navy and the RAAF, then The Course versus each of the Services and finally, for the last mission, The Course vs the World,” says Squadron Leader Crowhurst. ”All the facets of war they have trained for are practised in a large scenario, so all their planning, all their tactics are tested in that final three weeks culminating in a large scale strike in which we overfly large areas of New South Wales and Victoria. ”

The seven students who have graduated from this course replace their instructors in the RAAF’s No2 Operational Conversion Unit, based at Williamtown. They don’t know it yet, but they can look forward to working an average20 hours extra a week for the next six years as an FCI.

There’s no overtime pay in the RAAF. Each of these pilots earns about $40,000 a year, which is several thousand less than the driver of a Hunter Valley coal train and a lot less than they could make outside in commercial flying. For two or three years they will teach ‘bog rats’ (young inexperienced pilots) how to make the transition from the Macchi jet trainer to the F-18 – something akin to moving up from·a Ford Escort to a Formula One race car. Later they will train their own replacements at a future FCI course, then either go overseas on exchange service or become the weapons and tactics expert in their squadron. “Either way, we’ve got a pretty good flying future to look forward to,” says Flt Lt Frank D’. Alterio, of No 3 Squadron.

The course also represents a major investment of taxpayers’ money. As well as the seven students, there are 18 instructors and ‘enemy’ pilots, 23 aircraft, plus technical support crews. Sqn Ldr Crowhurst estimates the cost of turning out a new FCI at about $2m each but he says it is necessary to maintain the highest standards of combat expertise in the RAAF’s fighter force.

“Every time we have an exercise with foreign air forces they are surprised by our high combat standards,” he says, adding that the RAAF’s fighter force hasn’t been to war since Korea. Ideally, it takes six years, and at an absolute minimum three years, to train a modern fighter pilot. As the Gulf crisis has demonstrated, events can move a lot faster than that.

The FCls are the best of the best in the RAAF. Let’s hope we never have to find out just how good they are