The Ministry of Defence is to award Inzpire a contract worth £502k to deliver air warfare education and training to the Ukrainian Air Force, covering roughly 20 weeks of instruction a year, the department stated in a contract award notice.

The contract runs for a year from 26 August 2026, with a single 12-month option period available, and the earliest date for signature is 26 August.

According to the notice, the work covers an air tactics and planning course, including the setting of training objectives, course development and delivery. The contract was placed directly rather than through competition, and is classified under the common procurement vocabulary code for technical training services.

The supplier is Inzpire Limited, a company based at Alpha Court in Lincoln and recorded as a small or medium-sized enterprise.

Inzpire was founded in 2006 by former RAF aircrew and has built its business around mission planning software and the provision of experienced military personnel as instructors and advisers. Its GECO mission system is used on British and export aircraft, and the company has held training and evaluation contracts across the RAF and Royal Navy, including work supporting fast jet and rotary wing crews.

Britain has trained Ukrainian personnel continuously since 2022, most visibly through Operation Interflex, the infantry training programme run in the UK with contributions from more than a dozen partner nations, which has put tens of thousands of recruits through basic soldiering courses. Air training has been a smaller and less publicised strand.

Ukrainian pilots began elementary flying training in the UK in 2023 as part of the international effort to prepare crews for the F-16, with the aircraft themselves supplied by Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium since Britain does not operate the type. Language training and ground school ran alongside, with conversion to type handled elsewhere.

Tactics and planning instruction of the kind covered by this contract addresses a different problem from flying the aircraft. Soviet-derived air forces were built around close ground control, with controllers directing aircraft onto targets, while NATO practice places far more responsibility on the aircrew to plan missions, interpret the air picture and make decisions in flight.