Skills retention

Milskil was born from an idea by founder and CEO, John Lonergan in the late 1990s.

Lonergan had been an RAAF Macchi, Mirage and F/A-18 pilot and instructor, was one of only two RAAF pilots to complete an exchange with the USAF flying F-16Cs at Luke AFB (the other was current Chief of Air Force, AIRMSHL Mark Binskin), qualified as a Fighter Combat Instructor (FCI) on the Hornet and Squadron’s Weapons Officer (FCI equivalent in the USAF) on the F-16, and became a flight commander then executive officer at 77SQN when he returned to Australia.

When Lonergan left the permanent air force in 1996, he began flying Westwinds and Learjets in various Defence Support roles, while also keeping his hand in as a reserve instructor on Macchis at 76SQN. “I saw the air force had obvious issues with retention of fighter instructors,” Lonergan told Australian Aviation. “You see a guy who’s spent anywhere up to 20 years becoming a professional master as a fighter pilot and instructor, who then sees that his only alternative career to is to go to an airline where he’s on equal footing with a guy who’s gone through civilian training and has got 500-1000 hours multi-engine time. The airlines aren’t really interested in all these professional skills; they’re just interested in some core pilot skill sets, which seemed a real waste.”

Milskil has employed a number of key players to develop and manage the company’s operations. Chief among them is Mike Kitcher, Milskil’s General Manager, who brings significant operational management expertise to the company. Kitcher is a former commanding officer of 3SQN and Director of Operations at Headquarters Air Command (HQAC), and is described by Lonergan as an operations management guru, one who you can “throw a bunch of tasks and not enough assets at, and he’ll juggle it and it’ll all fall down right.”

Classic Hornet

Lonergan began pitching the idea of contract aircrew to the RAAF in 2002 at a time which coincided with an instructor shortage at 2OCU, so he and his initial cadre were brought in as a trial to supplement the instructors on the Hornet simulators. Evaluation of the trial saw a tender developed in 2005 to provide contract Hornet simulator and ground school instructors at 2OCU on a permanent basis, and the arrangement was formalised with Milskil winning the tender the following year. This contract expanded under option to include training support for all ACG Hornet pilots at both Williamtown and Tindal.

Milskil’s instructors are required to teach all aspects of classic Hornet employment including conversion, air to air and air to surface operations. On a typical OPCON, a pilot will spend about a third of their cockpit time in the simulator with Milskil’s instructors, and so instructors not only maintain an office at 2OCU at Williamtown, but are fully integrated into the unit’s training system there. “It’s fairly significant – it’s almost everything a pilot does in the aircraft – and he learns it with Milskil first.”

Milskil is in now in their eighth year of Classic Hornet instruction support and use a mix of fulltime and part time instructors to service the needs of the four Classic Hornet squadrons.

41 Wing

Milskil instructors have also been contracted to provide air combat expertise to 41WG Basic and Advanced Air Battle Manager (ABM) trainees who will go on to direct operations from the back of a Wedgetail AEW&C or in one of the two Regional Operations Centres (ROC) at Tindal and Williamtown.

“41WG had always relied on ad hoc support from ACG aircrew for their courses,” Lonergan said. “The opportunity existed there because there simply weren’t enough ACG aircrew available enough of the time to effectively meet 41WG’s needs, and we provided a suitable alternative that would work to their schedule of training. For a lot of the training that occurs over there, they require interaction from fast jet guys, to come in and provide SME (subject matter expert) fighter tactics lectures and to explain the intricacies of the F/A-18.”

After the ‘Hornet 101’ instruction, lectures are conducted on the Hornet’s abilities in scenarios such as 2v2 and 4vX, Offensive Counter Air (OCA), Defensive Counter Air (DCA), and weapons capabilities, as well as more advanced instruction for the Tactical Director’s course.
Milskil also provides instructors to participate in simulator training at 41WG, providing the ‘back-end’ input into many of the simulation scenarios the trainees are faced with. “We helped them design their scenarios to make them more realistic and more up to date when we started supporting the back-end of the Sim,” said Lonergan. “They were very impressed with the results.”

While the initial work at 41WG was done on an ad hoc basis, the RAAF eventually put the work out to tender which Milskil won in 2009. Since then, the company has employed a dedicated Fighter Combat Controller (FCC) who’s initial task was to direct the most recent FCC course and who now manages Milskil’s services to 41WG, and its instructors have expanded their presence by re-jigging many of the existing courses, have changed many of the simulator scenarios, and have written a new advanced course which slots in between the Basic and Tactical Director courses.

“Because part of the ABM’s core job is working with fighters, we need to make sure they have a solid understanding of the fighter pilot’s world,” Lonergan added. “One of the things we’ve introduced into their course is we take ABMs over to the Hornet simulators and we put them in there and explain to them what a Hornet pilot does. We try to give them a three dimensional empathy for the environment including the cockpit and human machine interface. This helps them understand the different workloads pilots are subject to depending on a range of conditions and tailor their control accordingly.”

But the simulation scenario development at 41WG is no less important, with flexible scripts and more realistic presentations providing much better training for the ABMs and FCCs, especially during FCI courses and major exercises such as ECADEX. It’s probably fair to say that 41WG can’t get what Milskil gives them from within the RAAF anymore, as nowhere in the air force is there such a large pool of experienced instructors available to meet their needs who are current on the classic Hornet.

Super Hornet

So successful has Milskil’s contribution to the classic Hornet training support been, that the company was seen as a logical contender to participate in tender for the Australian Super Hornet Training Services Support (TSS) Contract. The TSS contract for the Super Hornet comprises both maintenance support for the training devices and the delivery of aircrew training for both Super Hornet pilots and back seat Air Combat Officers (ACOs).

“We teamed with Raytheon who already had significant expertise in the maintenance and operations of the classic Hornet simulators, and our team was declared the successful tenderer in November 09,” Lonergan explained. “The contract was signed in February with Milskil being responsible for aircrew training delivery and training system development. We got to work straight away, and we’ve just had our first big milestone when we delivered the initial block TMP (Training Management Package) to the RAAF.”

The TMP was developed in close consultation with the RAAF. To this end, much of the Super Hornet’s OPCON course will initially be derived from a mix of the RAAF’s classic Hornet and F-111 experience, the US Navy’s training courseware, and the USAF’s experience with the F-15E Strike Eagle. While the Super Hornet is a Navy jet and the US Navy has been instrumental is getting the RAAF up to speed so quickly, the RAAF’s operational doctrine is more akin to that of the USAF, and the way the two-seat Super Hornet will be operated in the longer term is likely to more closely mirror that of the multirole, dual seat Strike Eagle.

To that end, Milskil has recently employed a number of former RAAF F-111 Navigators or ACOs, and all of its instructors at Amberley will have the ability to train both front and back set crew members.

“We didn’t want to walk into this as a bunch of single-seat Hornet guys trying to put our stamp on things,” Lonergan explained. “So we’re building a team that will have a spectrum of capability that mirrors the Super Hornet crew. The former F111 aircrew provide us with their significant knowledge of crew coordination and air to surface tactics. They integrate into our team as Mission Specialists, responsible for design and management of the simulation scenarios and the provision of SME ACO input during student training missions and training system development. They undertake similar transition training to uniformed Super Hornet ACOs and are fully conversant with the aircraft and its systems.”

“Our F/A-18F instructors have to be able to instruct both TOFT cockpits, and they also have to be able to operate as a flight lead or wingman on linked missions. Transitioning to the front seat is deliberately simple, by clever Boeing design, for a Classic HUG 2.2 Hornet pilot. I jumped in the Super Hornet TOFT front seat and I was off, and everything I did in the HUG 2.2 Hornet seemed to work in the Super. Obviously there are far greater capabilities in some of the systems but, from a pilot’s perspective, it was incredibly pleasing to just jump in and have everything fall to hand, and everything still worked pretty much like it does in the classic jet, but with additional capabilities. The similarities are most evident in that a number of our instructors regularly interchange between Classic and Super instruction”

But Lonergan added that there is little resemblance between the Super Hornet’s back seat and front seat. Whilst many of the displays are common, there is a bigger screen in the back, the ‘piccolo drill’ or the switchology on the Hands On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS) is quite different, and with the decoupled cockpits in the Super Hornets, the crew members will often be doing their own thing on a mission. “All of our guys have CRM (Crew Resource Management) experience as part of their RAAF training anyway,” he said. “Whether you’re in the same jet or whether you’re flying in formation, CRM principles apply, with the actual CRM model to be used in the Super Hornet being constantly refined by the RAAF.”

Milskil plans to have 13 staff in total based at Amberley for its Super Hornet workforce, and draw from its Williamtown based resources to cover the phasing in period until the permanent workforce is in place in early 2011. To this end, many of Milskil’s staff have already been rotating through Amberley to ‘fly’ and instruct on the Super Hornet TOFT and to begin to populate the training courseware.

Diversity

Whilst Milskil’s staff have their core roles in pilot training, Lonergan is working had to build a larger capability into the business through related but diverse work.

To this end, Milskil has been providing exercise support services to all major ADF air and joint exercises since 2004. “We started this work when the requirement was generated to be able to conduct real time airborne kill assessment for beyond visual range (BVR) engagements. The assessment is done by Range Training Officers (RTOs) using real time tactical ground based displays and comms. RTOs are essentially airborne umpires and need to be experienced fighter pilots current in the weapons and tactics being employed. Our F18 simulator instructors fit the bill and allow the uniformed aircrew to fly instead”.

Milskil also helps to manage the ‘White Force’ support during these exercises. “Basically, when there’s any exercise going on, there’s an element that sits off to the side that make sure all the coordination between blue force and red force occurs,” Lonergan explained. “White Force is designed to ensure scenarios are created and managed that facilitate the achievement of Blue Force training objectives. White Force pulls strings and pushes things around so that events will occur in accordance with what the exercise planners want to happen while remaining largely transparent to the participants. They’ll be feed information designed to shape their normal mission planning and briefing processes, and once they get airborne they’ll be subjected to a different series of presentations, which have all been crafted to test the robustness of their planning. We do that live when the missions are running, and we’ll manage red air through the ABM team. We manage how red air is generated and presented and we can ramp things up and ramp things down so that the objectives of the mission are met.”

Milskil expanded its exercise support in early 2010 through a contract to the Australia-US Joint Combined Training Capability (JCTC). These services include the operation of electronic warfare training equipment in an opposition force (OPFOR) scenario, the injection of pilot role players into various simulations as part of those exercises in scenarios such as close air support, CAOC operations, air land integration, and air liaison officer support.

“Although we’re every pilot focussed, we also look at what the secondary skills our staff have and how best to apply that,” Lonergan said. “So, we’ve got F/A-18 instructors out in the field operating EW stimulation systems, both fixed and mobile, and assessing aircrew reactions to this stimulation. Our operators know what’s going on in the cockpit and therefore, they know what to do with the equipment to get a result in the cockpit and assess it. So, we’re much more interested in the person as a whole, than just what their core skill is.”

Lonergan believes the variety of roles the company’s staff can fulfil provides a work environment comparable to that experienced by those in uniform, but with better stability from a work-life balance viewpoint. “There’s only so much the Military can do for the work life balance, because of how the Military does it job,” he said. “People get posted or deployed overseas for operations. Similarly, if you’re in the airlines whatever the roster is, that’s your roster. If you’re a long-haul guy, yes you’re at home for a long time, but you’re gone for a long time for the rest of your career. While our guys will still be required to go away occasionally because that’s the nature of some of the activities, they’ll still be coming home and will have locational stability which works well for the family.”

“A classic example of the variety of work, in the last few weeks we’ve had one guy who has been delivering training on classic Hornet, delivering training at 41WG, delivering EW training to squadrons through JCTC, and working on Super Hornet at Amberley.”

“Whilst the vision of the company is bigger than fighter pilots, because my background is as a fighter pilot it was a good entry point to start with, because I was eminently familiar with the domain,” he added. “I wanted to create something that would capture the high end operational expertise that would otherwise be lost to Defence, and to give high quality military skilled people an opportunity to continue to use their hard earned skills as a civilian working with the ADF.”

Milskil’s contracts dictate that its personnel must be former RAAF F/A-18 instructors or F111/other fast jet aircrew, and so far the company’s roughly 25 staff have all been recruited from former RAAF pilots flying with the airlines or under contract in the Middle East, or aircrew as they were leaving the RAAF. Indeed, Lonergan stressed that the company has very strict protocols about not recruiting from current RAAF ranks unless an individual is about to leave the service and may potentially be lost to Defence forever, hence the recruitment pool is a very shallow one and the company’s recruitment cycle is a long one.

“We have experience with how long it takes to find these guys and we don’t want to solve our problem by pulling all of our people out of the air force,” explained Lonergan. “We actually have a very good relationship with our customer when it comes to recruiting guys who are already in Defence, and we don’t want to change that.”

Future

Milskil’s future looks bright, particularly as virtually the entire pool of available former F/A-18 pilots in Australia suitably qualified to instruct on the Hornet and Super Hornet is already on the company’s payroll. But Lonergan is not one to rest on his laurels, and is broadening the company’s horizons into new opportunities as they come up.

“There is a range of near term ADF projects in the pipeline that we see we can play a role in, such as Air 5428,” he said. The ADF’s Project Air 5428 training program will see all the fixed wing basic and advanced training platforms changed out and, as many elements within the RAAF and industry are hoping, the whole training system re-jigged to improve pilot throughput and the standard of pilot produced. “We are also positioning ourselves to be ready for opportunities in JSF training that may present themselves – we see that as a logical extension of our fighter pilot training capabilities.”

Lonergan also sees an opportunity down the track to provide contract fast jet flying instructors to the RAAF, possibly on the Hawk. Such a move would see the company across all three RAAF fast jets. “It would provide a good supportive capability for Defence, particularly now we’re across Hornet, Super Hornet, we actually have a pretty unique view of ACG’s requirements,” he said. “If we brought Hawk into the fold, then we would have a view of the whole training system and we would have guys that would be working in and across the training system, as opposed to the current ‘stove pipes’.”

And while such a move might also challenge current funding and cultural thinking within the RAAF, the model does successfully exist in other countries. The major benefit is the corporate knowledge provided by contract aircrews would continually deepen rather than transitioning out every couple of years with posting cycles while allowing uniformed aircrew to concentrate on their core business of operations.