A Multitude of Missions

“It’s just Windows 8,” the technician says with a shrug, a quick gesture to explain the computer glitch we seem to be experiencing. It’s his second visit in the past few minutes and so far he has not been able to find a quick fix to our predicament. Seated in the dimmed cockpit of a CC-130J Hercules full motion simulator, we’re looking at what appears to be the walls of an underground bunker.

Moments earlier, student pilots Captains Kyle Welsh and Andy Feltrin had us climbing out of the airfield in Trenton, Ont., and banking leisurely over the St. Lawrence River. Our sudden appearance back on the ground with our wheels still up is no fault of theirs. We had requested more dramatic scenery, like the Rocky Mountains. While switching locations in mid-air is technically feasible, Windows seems to have correctly recognized that the mountain peaks around Jasper, Alta., should not appear beside the edge of the Great Lakes. So we’re back on the ground—a computer crash of sorts.

“Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn’t work on this,” said Capt Damar Walker, a tactical training flight pilot, as he requests a full reboot. “[The technician] is going to reset the system and then we should be good to go.”

Several minutes later, we are circling north of Jasper and manoeuvring through the Rockies. Although the simulator is not in motion for this flight—to allow us to take photos without losing our balance—the level of realism is remarkable. With each banking turn, both pilots move their heads in unison to the movement of the terrain around us, as the aircraft’s warning system alerts of a mountain face in our path. 

From the simulator, we’re soon on the flight line with Captains Stephen Pollock, Joseph Tufenkdjian, Ian Wright and Brett Janes, and Sergeants Derek Styan and Kimberly Sopha, two seasoned aircrews about to conduct a typical 426 Transport Training Squadron staff training exercise. Styan, for example, completed seven tours into Afghanistan and has the distinction of closing out both the Afghan and Libyan operations on the same tour.

But with the exception of the increased noise in the cockpit, the transition from the virtual to the live aircraft is almost seamless. 

As before, we take off from Trenton—with a reminder of how little runway is required to lift the powerful Hercules—but now head north toward the Ottawa River. West of the town of Bancroft, Ont., with the sun breaking through, the two-ship formation begins an elaborate game of follow the leader, diving down across shimmering lakes and bare tree tops that just weeks before showcased a spectacular array of fall colours. When we reach the Ottawa River east of Bissett Creek, the formation drops below 200 feet and skims northward above the river, before circling back to complete the tactical exercise with a cargo drop onto the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre’s drop zone at Canadian Forces Detachment Mountain View.

“We do this about once a week to keep ourselves current,” said Pollock of the exercise, which also includes defensive tactics that have been omitted on this day. “We instruct how to do this at the squadron, so we want to make sure we keep our skills up.”

Despite the technical malfunction in the simulator, both flights are illustrative of how the modernized training system is preparing CC-130J pilots for a range of complex missions and an operational tempo few would have predicted a few years ago. 

With the end of the mission in Afghanistan, many predicted a drop in the operational rhythm of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). That hasn’t been the case. In fact, the CAF is currently conducting almost 20 missions around the globe, from Haiti to the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kosovo, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and all require continuous logistical support.

“We are actually busier now then we were at the height of the Afghan mission,” said Col Colin Keiver, the commander of 8 Wing at CFB Trenton, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s hub for air mobility. “On any day, 10 to 15 of these grey tails are somewhere in the world doing something.”  

The introduction of the CC-177 Globemaster in 2007 and the CC-130J Hercules in 2010 have given the Wing a capability never experienced before, Keiver explained. Whether it is strategic airlift into a theatre of operations or tactical missions within the theatre, both fleets have been running at near full capacity, augmenting already stretched Challenger, Airbus and H-model Hercules fleets. 

If something is required for a mission or for a navy ship at sea, and it can fit on one of the aircraft, 8 Wing has probably transported it. In theatre, CC-130Js have dropped paratroopers in Poland and moved Special Forces into and out of northern Iraq from Kuwait. “We are involved in just about everything air mobility can do on a global basis right now,” said Keiver. 

Though the missions may be tasked and planned in Canadian Joint Operations Command and 1 Canadian Air Division, the “grey tail that they are going on is being generated out of here,” he added, “and that tail is usually the first one on the ground and the last one to leave.”

Like the mayor of a dynamic small city, Keiver is responsible for the largest and busiest military station in the RCAF, managing a $110 million payroll that covers over 3,200 Regular Force, 500 Reserves and 800 civilians. His operating budget of $160 million represents 25 per cent of the entire RCAF budget. 

A typical day for his CC-130J, CC-177 and CC-150 operational squadrons involves a dozen aircraft circling the globe and two to three departing for or returning from operations. That, however, is only a small fraction of the activity in the Wing: 426 Transport Training Squadron, in addition to operating one of the most sophisticated schoolhouses, regularly conducts training flights; 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron, with an area of responsibility that extends from the Canadian border to the North Pole and from Quebec City to Alberta, launches four to five aircraft a week to respond to SAR incidents; and 3 Wing Bagotville maintains a CF-188 Hornet deployed operating base at Trenton that requires support, maintenance and security personnel. And then there are units like the Disaster Assistance Response Team and the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre, all of which require infrastructure support. 

Adding a further wrinkle to the mix at the time of writing was the likely influx of Syrian refugees. While the exact number 8 Wing will accommodate is unknown, there are housing, support and security considerations to manage. “Everything that we are doing is strictly a matter of due diligence to facilitate the government’s objectives,” said Keiver. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that our facilities will be ready should we be called upon to act.”

The key to meeting that demanding pace for both aircrews and technicians has been the evolution of the RCAF’s high-tech “transport” schoolhouse, the Air Mobility Training Centre (AMTC). 

At almost 18,000 square metres, the AMTC is a state-of-the art facility emblematic of where the RCAF intends to go with its future aircrew and technician training. When the $40 million building opened in September 2012, it brought all aspects of CC-130J aircrew and maintenance training under one roof, and laid out a path to eventually integrate all air mobility training. 

The centre is part of the Operational Training Systems Provider (OTSP) program, a contract awarded to Montreal’s CAE in 2009 to provide comprehensive training through a mix of in-class, computer-based and simulated learning. It is a model for what CAE says military and civilian customers are now requesting. 

426 Squadron practices a motto of “crawl, walk, run,” and AMTC, which still has the smell of a new building, is set up to guide students through a series of iterative steps that begin with computer-based training and then, for pilots, progress to an instrument procedures trainer, a tactical flight trainer, a weapon systems trainer, and finally a full mission flight trainer. 

For loadmasters, the centre includes a full-scale fuselage with systems that can simulate all the sounds and conditions of being airborne, and the means to rehearse loading and unloading actual cargo, all of which can be linked with the pilot mission simulators for combined training. 

For technicians, in an immaculate but cavernous hangar lie two fuselages, one with wings and one with a fully exposed cockpit, used to deliver a full range of maintenance training for the CC-130J.

At the moment, aircrew training for the CC-177 Globemaster III and CC-150 Polaris is conducted outside of Canada, but the AMTC has been designed with a longer-term goal of integrating new training systems for both into a more holistic air mobility system.

“That would be the ideal end state,” commented Keiver. “Ideally, I would have the training devices for all of my fleets in that building. It’s not just the devices—there are synergies you get with regards to scenario development and courseware design. When it is all in-house, you can achieve huge things.”

Capt Welsh, who flew the CC-177 for five years before returning to school to learn the CC-130J, said there is also a value to learning the terminology, doctrine, tactics and systems in a Canadian schoolhouse with instructors who are RCAF or former RCAF pilots. Crews who do their training in the U.S. or U.K. have to “figure out what is applicable and what is not. Here, you don’t have to go through that negative training. And there is something to be said about primacy: the first time you are put into a stressful situation, a lot of the time that [initial training] is the first thing that comes back.”

The structure of the AMTC allows students to prepare for a training mission exactly as they would for the actual exercise, right down to the pre-flight briefing. “We train how we fight,” said Walker. “We want the students to come to the simulator sessions, whether it is the instrument flight trainer, the tactical flight trainer, or the weapon systems trainer, as if they were going to their real aircraft. That way, when they get to the actual aircraft, it’s old hat.”

The expanded use of simulation has not reduced the length of courses—if anything, instructors are finding new ways to introduce more information—but the two simulation phases of the CC-130J program, for example, provide an aircraft and mission-qualified pilot who can immediately embark on operations.  

“I am not flying airplanes now solely for the purposes of training,” Keiver explained. “When my airplanes fly, they are almost always flying in operations.”

That includes seasoned pilots who must regularly maintain skill sets, especially night vision goggle qualifications. That currency requirement can now be split between the simulators and operational flights. “If you see a CC-130J going over to Kuwait, there is always a dual purpose,” said Walker. “That could be someone’s AC [aircraft commander] upgrade ride; that could be someone upgrading from a Level 2 first officer to a Level 3 first officer.” 

A similar benefit is also being realized with technicians. The quality of simulation means students arriving from their initial training at CFB Borden are able to become “performance of maintenance” qualified without setting foot in an actual CC-130J. And 436 Squadron maintainers can maintain or upgrade skills or conduct tasks like an engine run qualification without firing up an aircraft.

Less time in actual aircraft is an obvious cost saver, but there are still significant costs with designing, developing scenarios, and operating a completely networked system. The payoff is in the quality of the pilot, Keiver said.

“It’s not that we have necessarily compressed the time it takes to train a guy. But what he gets out of that training continuum in a six-month period is significantly more than he got out of the old six-month course. I am absolutely convinced that the guys coming out of the training system today are significantly more advanced in terms of skills related to decision-making just because of the training environment we have been able to create for them.”

For example, there is no real difference between the co-pilot and the aircraft commander on a CC-130J in terms of their ability to employ the aircraft. “That co-pilot comes out of that operational training unit completely able to execute a night vision goggle assault landing into a 5,000-foot gravel strip in a high threat environment in the left seat. The difference becomes one of experience and command authority,” noted Keiver. “When we didn’t use the simulator as much, it was always an instructor pilot in the other seat and that always induces artificialities. When you put two of them in the seat and stand back and watch them, that is the true crucible; that’s the real test.”

Mission rehearsal is not yet part of the AMTC curriculum, but Keiver contends the quality of the training means aircrews have the skills to operate in any environment. “Our belief is that as long as I can give those guys a really good foundation—I make them critical thinkers and able to think on their feet—then we can push them into just about anywhere in the world.”

He also admits he could not meet the demands of the operational tempo without the training centre. “We’re sending these guys out into the world with 1,000 to 1,200 hours on type (a CC-130J or CC-177). When they are operating in the middle of Africa we absolutely have to be confident that they have the skills not just to fly the airplane, but to make decisions, and understand situational awareness and mission analysis, all those other things that are so critical to making the mission a success.” 

The capacity of the transport fleet and the pace of operations, however, have exposed one crack in the system: cargo handling. Keiver said he is operating at “400 per cent above design capacity” and will need to borrow a page from allies like the U.S. and U.K., which have both made significant investments in cargo management. “And we’ll talk to industry,” he added. “Organizations like FedEx have got it nailed with regards to how to move cargo.”

However, you know you have a good thing when others start asking to play with it. The AMTC hasn’t officially opened its doors for external business, but already two pilots with the U.S. Coast Guard have completed a course and the USAF, Danes, and Norwegians are among several allies enquiring about training opportunities. That is all part of the long-term plan, Keiver noted.

In a profession where frequent postings rarely allow you to see the results of your own decisions, Keiver is an unusual beneficiary of his own hard work. As the senior staff officer, transport, with 1 Canadian Air Division, he was one of the architects of the transition to the CC-177 and CC130J fleets. Later, as commander of 436 Squadron, he had a hand in the integration of the CC-130J capability into operations in Afghanistan and Libya. Today, as 8 Wing commander, he admits some of those decisions were pretty good. 

“There are things we could have done differently, but overall I’m so proud of where we are at right now because we have made great strides in the last five years. I think [the aircraft] have exceeded expectations. I don’t think we necessarily knew what we were going to get. But as we gain experience with the platforms, we are constantly discovering different or better ways of doing things. And, we are at the front end of that capability development. It’s motivating. We now have an air mobility capability in the RCAF that is world-class.”

The RCAF’s operational tempo may no longer be driven by one large mission, but the multitude of smaller operations around the globe has tested the capacity of its newest transport fleets. Keeping pace has only been possible because of the quality of a training system that is preparing pilots to operate anywhere the government sends them.