Aces North

FCIs are posted with all of the RAAF’s fast jet units, comprising the Amberley-based 1 and 6SQNs; 2OCU, 3 and 77SQNs at Williamtown; and 75SQN at Tindal, as well as within both the parent 81 and 78 Wings. With the bulk of 1SQN currently located at NAS Lemoore in the US preparing for the transition to the F/A-18F Super Hornet early next year, 6SQN is the RAAF’s only remaining F-111C unit, while the other squadrons operate the F/A-18A/B Hornet which has recently received extensive systems, structural and weapons upgrades under Projects Air 5376, Air 5409 and Air 5418.

“The thing that makes an FCI such a high value asset is the thinking, management and leadership skills we put into him.”

“The FCI is at the pinnacle,” GPCAPT Turnbull added. “He’s the guy who goes out and works for the Executive Officer (XO) of a unit, and he helps drive the training inside that unit to produce more ‘B Cats’ (B-category combat rated pilots). B Cats are our lifeblood – if we don’t produce more B Cats, we don’t survive. So he makes sure the training matches the standards we want, and that it moves at the speeds we want, so he’s a pretty key guy inside the unit.”

The four-week long Aces North Exercise is run on a scenario basis with daily objectives rather than as a continuous ‘war’ like other exercises. In the most recent course, there was a night ‘wave’ which generally started at around midnight and went through to dawn, and a morning wave, with most of the exercise-related flying completed by early afternoon. The trainee FCIs typically flew four days a week, and were heavily involved in mission planning and execution outside of their flying hours. “Because of the hours they work we manage fatigue,” said GPCAPT Turnbull. “So they had specific times that they had to knock off and go to bed in individual air conditioned accommodation to make sure that they got rest, and we kept close track of their fatigue levels to ensure we didn’t put them in dangerous situations.

“As far as the battle rhythm they have to work with, they’ll fly once a day and they are involved in the planning the day prior. Because the buck stops with them, they are the guys who are assessed pretty much the whole time. They have to allocate resources, but they don’t have and they will never be given all of the resources that they think they’ll need. So they have to solve resource conflicts and shortages, and they have to coordinate all of the planning including determining what tasks have to be done and by whom. That all happens the day prior and they then work right up to what would be a coordination brief where they coordinate with all the key representatives of all the assets involved.

“We have special instructions – the FCI students have their special instructions with all of the information he needs, but we also have staff-only special instructions which are the syllabus and the requirements of the staff, what sort of injects into the plan will be required, and what the expected outcomes are. It’s not completely fluid – we drive them down a certain path to solve one problem which might lead to more problems to continue to solve issues and to manage an airborne and ground based battle in their particular environment, understanding what’s going on around them within a much bigger picture to achieve the outcomes they desire.”

GPCAPT Turnbull added that, quite deliberately, the staff may deviate from the plan in order to see how the FCI candidates react and to enhance the learning experience.

For Aces North, 81WG had about 23 F/A-18s at Tindal including those of the resident 75SQN, as well as six F-111Cs and two Caribous. Further support was provided from Tindal by a visiting US Marine Corps unit of 12 Japan-based F/A-18C/Ds and two KC-130J tankers, while USAF B-52s from the 23rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron based on the Pacific island of Guam flew a total of eight 12-hour sorties over a four day period in support of the exercise. Earlier in the course, the Oregon and Hawai’i Air National Guards had deployed F-15C/Ds to Williamtown to support the air-to-air learning phase of the course. “This was a great experience for the 23rd, as well as Australia,” said MAJ Tom Morgan, the 23rd EBS assistant director of operations in an article on the USAF’s www.af.mil website in December. “It provided a chance for our crews to execute some long duration missions and also provided a good experience of working with other coalition partners, as well as integrating into a large force exercise. We don’t often get the chance to integrate with fighter assets, so to be able to fly in a large force package with 20-30 aircraft was a very good experience, very good training for us.”

“It’s certainly a lot of assets,” observed GPCAPT Turnbull. “Because when you think about it, you have to put the FCIs in a situation where they’ve got the assets in the air they’re working with, and that doesn’t include the assets that we put in there in simulation across the link network. So, it’s a lot of work to create those environments and that scenario, with people on the ground, the pyrotechnics support, the radio support, the link network support, the base support, the Delamere Range support, and each of the units probably brings a 200 person deployment, so yeah, it’s a big event, 600 extra people into Tindal effectively.”

Indeed, this writer gained first hand experience of some of the ground support and simulation elements during a November visit to Katherine and the surrounding ranges and areas. For many of the scenarios faced by the FCI students, the RAAF engaged contractors to provide electronic warfare (EW) simulation comprising electronic emitters, SAM site mock-ups and pyrotechnics around high value ‘targets’ on the extensive Delamere and Bradshaw ranges; to act as special forces in the conduct of high value asset extractions in conjunction with or opposed to close air support in blue and red force scenarios; and to assist staff back at Tindal in injecting simulated airborne and ground based blue and red force assets as required and in assessing ‘kills’. “The capabilities these contractors bring add a lot of value to the exercises,” said GPCAPT Turnbull. “I can remember back to Pitch Black in the 1980s where we didn’t have that, and those air battles quickly became a shambles because you didn’t know who was supposed to be ‘kill removing’, and it could occasionally become very artificial. And when it becomes artificial you have the danger of teach the wrong lessons to the guys in the cockpit – it’s negative training. These days, if you understand that a screw up on your part means that you turn around and fly 200 miles back to Darwin or Tindal and land and that’s your game over for the day, that focuses you!

FCI candidates are selected to go on the course based on a mix of experience and attitude. “We like them to have an absolute minimum of 500 hours, which generally means they’ve had a full tour and they’re a Cat B fighter pilot before they can go on the course,” said GPCAPT Turnbull. “The course participants are recommended by their Commanding Officers (COs) to the Wing, through me to the Commander ACG. They have to have a pretty broad experience base before we throw them into the deep end of FCI – if you take a new pilot who comes in via direct entry after he leaves school at 18 – we wont see them ready for an FCI course for at least six or seven years, so they’ll be 25 or older and they’ll be a Flight Lieutenants (FLTLTs) by then – I think these days it’s pretty rare to see a FLGOFF on the course.”

“Our goal is to graduate six FCIs in a course. Just occasionally there’ll be somebody who falls by the wayside, but that’s usually early on in the course. We’ve put a lot of effort and time into them by the time they get towards the end of the course, so personally I think there’s something very wrong if we lose people late in the course.”

The RAAF isn’t planning to hold another FCI Course until early 2011. It is a resource intensive activity, and getting return on that investment is pretty key,” explained GPCAPT Turnbull. “We don’t run them very often, and they take significant resources when we do run them, but we are the professional force we are because of it. We learned that lesson during the Korean War when (then CO 77SQN) Dicky Cresswell stood this up, and it’s a lesson we don’t want to re-learn. So we pay that money and we wear that hurt knowing that it keeps the long term viability of our professional force where it is.”

But the timing of the next course has also been determined due to the withdrawal next year of the F-111C and the manpower requirements to introduce the F/A-18F Super Hornets. “The timing is not so much about the Super Hornet itself – the timing is about our period of transition,” GPCAPT Turnbull noted. “So we can run an FCI course at the beginning of 2011 based on the transition that were in between people moving to Super Hornet, the amount of people we’ll have available to be trained to actually do a course. So while the Super Hornet people wont participate because it’s a bit too soon for them, they’ll be there watching. They’ll be embryonic at that time. So while they all understand what an FCI course is, integrating that airplane will be the next step 18 months down the track after the next one.

In closing, I jokingly compared the FCIs to that of the Jedi Knights of Star Wars fame – turns out I wasn’t that far off the mark! “There’s no ‘head FCI’ as such – it’s a real collective,” GPCAPT Turnbull said. “We have a tactics development cell which is managed through my standardisation officer who is generally an FCI. They liaise with our allies, and our bilateral, trilateral and multinational exercises are really where they get down to ‘tin tacks’ on that. So the US coming down for Pitch Black or Aces North, or us going to Red Flag, all of those kinds of exercises is where that working level of interaction occurs.”