School days

Having existed in its own right for a little over 30 years, SATC was this year awarded The Stonehaven Trophy as the most proficient training unit in the RAAF.

The recognition was a great honour to the school’s commanding officer, WGCDR Nicholas Dyce-McGowan, who brings to the job experience earned in the Bagdad International Airport control tower in the immediate aftermath of combat operations in Iraq in 2004.

School’s in

Part of Air Force Training Group (AFTG), SATC is managed by Air Training Wing and is tasked to produce qualified ATC/JBACs for its primary client, Surveillance and Response Group’s Number 44 Wing.

To this end, the school provides ab initio and postgraduate training.

Students arrive at the school with no prior ATC experience and leave nine months later able, among other things, to perform the duties of a tower and surface movement controller managing operations on and in the vicinity of ADF airfields as well as working as a coordinator for the approach or radar controller.

And the fact that, alone among the air forces of the world, the RAAF’s JBACs are trained to perform ATC to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards, means the school’s graduates are often deployed to far-flung locations from Haiti to Somalia, expediting both civil and military air movements around austere airfields in times of crisis.

Dyce-McGowan and SATC’s chief instructor, SQNLDR Pete Ferris, devise and refine courses to produce graduates with a deep grounding in air traffic control theory. Once assigned to one of 44WG’s 11 flights around the country, onthe- job training begins before the budding JBAC is cleared live and able to manage aircraft in the circuit.

Dyce-McGowan provided an overview of the range of tuition conducted by SATC.

“The school runs ab initio training, an ab initio tower course that teaches students surface movement control, tower control and approach planning, and we also give them procedural approach control through our tactical phase of training, where we introduce them to the fundamental concepts of battlefield airspace control,” he said. “And we deliver them an elementary skill set where the ADF would be able to employ them in a deployed area, in a complex or contested environment.

So our training is geared towards producing that product.

“For our postgrad courses, we run a newly reworked JBAC

We’re trained and licensed to same standard as our opposite numbers in Airservices.

approach course featuring new courseware. These students return to SATC after 12 to 18 months in the field to be trained as approach controllers. They will then return to 44WG with the full suite of core controlling skills.

“There’s the JBAC training officer course in which we teach students how to be training officers so they can take ab initio students and give them the training to get their endorsements and be members of a team.

We run a supervisors course for those supervising the work environment, where these students will have a small team they’re responsible for – either a surface movement controller (SMC) and tower controller or they might be responsible for the personnel inside the approach room,” Dyce- McGowan explained.

The school sees a throughput of 36 to 45 ab initio students per year, with numbers being determined by the needs of 44WG. Three postgrad approach courses are run each year, with the school capable of graduating up to 36 such students.

In total, SATC accommodates up to 156 students a year.

Dyce-McGowan continued: “We run an inflight emergency response course. This teaches students how to respond to contingencies such as engine failure, bird strikes, hijacking, bomb threats etc. We have instructors, guest presenters from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, CASA, from airlines, local police, fire brigade and local pilots so the students are exposed to the other first responders’ perspectives. We use simulators to back up all of that training as well.

“We have two instructor courses.

There’s the defence co-operation program instructors course, where we take students from other nations, and we give them tuition so they can go back to their country and teach, plus our own instructors course where we take instructors from the field, qualify them as teachers, and keep them on staff as JBAC ATC instructors. ”

JBAC to the future

Tuition at SATC is conducted in a seemingly endless warren of classrooms and utilises high fidelity, 360-degree simulators, part-task trainers, AV screens, right down to scale model airfields made of wood and using an array of model aircraft suspended in the landing pattern.

Over the course of 36 weeks, future JBACs are given a grounding in the fundamentals of air traffic control. As Dyce-McGowan stated: “We’re trained and licensed to the same standard as our opposite numbers in Airservices. We receive the same Diploma of Aviation issued by the Industry Skills Council of Australia. The licensing standards for defence controllers are also in accordance with the CASA manual of standards, namely Part 65 which covers ATC in Australia. ” The course is broken down into major segments, giving students the fundamentals required to work in either a control tower or in a radar room performing coordination for the approach controller.

The major elements of the JBAC course are as follows: >> Surface movement control (SMC) – A surface movement controller is part of a team that operates from the control tower. The SMC ‘owns’ the airfield, with the exception of the runway and is responsible for the coordination of all aircraft, vehicles and personnel within the movement area. It is the SMC who gives aircraft permission to taxi for example or for vehicles to cross the live runway.

It’s a very special skill-set, it’s an aptitude thing. Some people do have it and some simply don’t.

Tower control (TWR) – The tower controller is responsible for the safe and expeditious control and coordination of all aircraft on the runway and airborne within visual range of the aerodrome. Their area of responsibility nominally extends to five nautical miles from the runway and up to 2,000ft AGL. To keep track of all the aircraft under their command, tower controllers (and those in approach) use strips on which relevant information about a given aircraft is constantly updated. Tower controllers at SATC are also taught to take into account many considerations such as wake turbulence when sequencing takeoffs and landings.

>> Approach coordinator (APC) or planner (PLN) – While performing as an APC or PLN, a JBAC will issue airways clearances to aircraft and coordinate the movements of aircraft between a number of control agencies to assist in the safe and expeditious flow of traffic to and from the airfield.

>> Approach control (APP) – Approach control ensures the safe and efficient flight of all aircraft arriving, departing or operating within the airspace around the aerodrome. An approach controller will generally be situated in a building below and adjacent to the tower, and uses a radar display to plot and control aircraft under their control.

Importantly, JBAC students are taught the skill of ‘procedural’ or approach control without radar, a niche skill that, when combined with RAAF JBAC’s ICAO skills, see them in high demand in times of humanitarian crises when ATC is required in far-flung, rudimentary airfields.

As with the tower course, approach tuition is conducted on simulators, with fellow students and instructors acting as pilots of aircraft that budding JBACs must successfully control.

These simulator facilities are due for a major upgrade as the successor to the current Australian Defence Air Traffic System is implemented in the coming years.

The joint approach

Close cooperation between Airservices and the RAAF in the management of the country’s airspace is paramount to keeping the skies safe.

This joint approach is fostered at the training level, with Dyce- McGowan maintaining close contact with his civilian counterparts.

“We have quite a collaborative relationship with [Airsrevices].

I speak routinely to my opposite number there and we try to leverage each other’s experience in training and simulator development because we have the same basic platform for simulation in the tower environment.

Airservices has recently sent people to observe our training officers course and they’re working through to rebuild their workplace training and on-the-job training instructor courses.

“So we provide them with assistance there, and similarly we have a reciprocal arrangement. If we get some good information we share it with them. Also, one of my reserve instructors is a senior trainer at the Airservices Learning Academy. ”

New JBAC course

SATC maintains an ongoing feedback loop with its chief client, 44WG, and as such has undertaken numerous course improvements to better meet its needs.

This has lead to SATC devising a fully-developed JBAC training course, which aims to deliver even higher skilled graduates to 44WG.

The new course includes basic and advanced tower control with a higher emphasis on joint militarycivil airbase procedures, tactical tower and approach control in the procedural realm and a more comprehensive airspace planner phase.

According to SQNLDR Ferris, “It’s a much more comprehensivecourse. There’s more practical sim time, there’s a bigger reliance on the students to conduct an element of self-paced study to consolidate core elements of training so that we can focus on one-on-one interactions.

“We give a very direct focus to the tactical part of the course, which is the last third of the course. The 4WD training and time out bush, the procedural control, doing control without radar and they do a tower refresher as part of that course. So when they leave to go to 44WG, they’ve done serious time in tower and have a break, go out bush, come back and do class D tower control, but also the battlefield airspace control, the tactical part of the course. That’s the biggest change. ” Some 18 months in the planning, the new JBAC course is taught in both an initial and advanced phase, and as Dyce-McGowan explained, aims to produce more fullyrounded airspace controllers.

“The students do a lot of selfpaced learning outside of school hours and the focus is on giving them higher skills when they leave so they’re far more proficient in non-radar procedures, in procedural control elements and in dealing with aircraft emergencies. ” A major part of the course sees the students deployed on a tactical exercise, where they learn the finer points of battlespace deconfliction, ensuring the safe operation of friendly helicopters, mortars, UAVs and fast jets.

“We give them the elementary skills they need to integrate into a joint fires and effects coordination centre within an Army brigade. It’s very ground combat-focused. ” For the next part of the course, students are taught tactical procedural approach control, coupled with more tower simulation to refresh their skills. As Ferris pointed out, each phase of the course leads into the next.

“The moment the students start the tactical phase, it’s one big scenario.

When they’re out bush doing their airspace deconfliction role, the situation is that they’re deployed with the Army to a ‘hostile’ country.

Then, they come back to the school, go into the simulator and it’s all part of the same, ongoing scenario. So when they finally start back here, we say, “Last week when you were out behind that hill there, the same airspace control plan applies. It’s just that we’re in the tower now. ”

Home and away

Once graduated from SATC, newly qualified JBACs assume employment with 44WG and are posted to one of the 11 flights at military airfields around Australia.

Postgraduate students and indeed many of the instructors at the school can expect postings or deployments overseas as well, such as duties with the UN in Africa or ongoing commitments in the Middle East.

Indeed, graduates of the SATC’s comprehensive instruction have helped 44WG become one of the most decorated wings within the Air Force, having served with distinction in Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, with Dyce-McGowan himself receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia for ‘Meritorious service to the Royal Australian Air Force in the field of Joint Battlefield Airspace Control’.

And with RAAF JBACs’ skills in demand within the ADF and abroad, Dyce-McGowan was quick to identify what character traits make a joint battlefield airspace controller.

“It’s a very special skill-set, it’s an aptitude thing. Some people do have it and some simply don’t. What we try to do is take a rudimentary spatial model inside a student’s head and turn it into something where they can see a situation on a 2D display, be it a map or a strip, translate that into a 4D mentalmodel where they’re dealing with longitudinal, vertical and lateral separation as well as time – and for that to be something meaningful to them.

“But we have other aspects of battlefield airspace control. Working with Army and Navy, where we’ll have controllers posted to the Landing Helicopter Dock we have Air Force JBACs as permanent crew on that ship. We also form a part of the ship’s Supporting Arms Co-ordination Centre [defined as, ‘A single location on board an amphibious command ship in which all communication facilities incident to the coordination of fire support of the artillery, air, and naval gunfire are centralised’].

“We have parachute-qualified JBACs who work with the Army, special forces qualified JBACs who work with the RAAF’s 4SQN as well as JTAC specialists. In addition to that we have an exchange post with the USMC, which sees one controller posted to the USMC for a three-year tour. We have JBACs embedded in each of the Army brigade HQ as Battlefield Airspace Control Liaison Officers. So the range of work a military controller is exposed to is far and away more varied than that experienced in civilian ATC.

“It offers quite an exciting lifestyle and a lot of challenges. The traffic scenarios are more fluid and dynamic and the areas we go to at short notice can be austere, dynamic and fluid in nature. It adds a level of variety to the employment that people do find attractive. ”

The future

AIR 5431 seeks to procure a new Defence Air Traffic Management and Control System (DATMCS) to replace the existing Australian Defence Air Traffic System, which reaches life-of-type in 2015, as part of the broader One Sky project with Airservices.

Conducted over three phases, it is intended to introduce a deployable DATMCS and new ATC sensors to replace existing sensors and radar at the 11 military airfields in Australia.

For SATC, this will also mean new radar simulators installed at the school, permitting an expanded syllabus to keep Australian military air traffic control among the best in the world for the foreseeable future.