The Ministry of Defence has revealed how long it takes to train fast jet, heavy lift and rotary wing pilots.
Tobias Ellwood, Chair of the Defence Committee, asked:
“To ask the Secretary of State Defence, how long it takes on average to train (a) fast jet, (b) heavy lift and (c) rotary pilots.”
James Heappey, Minister of State for the Ministry of Defence, responded:
“The average time for trainee pilots completing flying training in the current Financial Year, to the point of joining an Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) is 4.8 years for Fast Jet; 5.4 years for Multi Engine (heavy lift) and; 6.9 years for Rotary Wing.
The time taken to complete OCU training can vary across the aircraft types and will result in newly qualified pilots leaving OCUs as Limited Combat Ready or Combat Ready.
There have always been planned holds built into the flying training pipeline to ensure all courses are fully utilised. Aircrew on hold fulfil other essential roles across Ministry of Defence (MOD), developing their skills in other areas of MOD business.”
Damning report finds RAF Cranwell has major issues
An investigation into an RAF officer trading academy in Lincolnshire has found that the base has “significant” issues with heating, accommodation and morale.
RAF Cranwell was one of eight regular RAF training centres across the country inspected by Ofsted as part of an investigation into welfare and duty of care in the Armed Forces’ initial training programmes between 2021 and 2022.
“Recruits and trainees generally benefit from high-quality training, care and welfare arrangements. But too often, Ofsted found senior officers and their staff spending time dealing with the legacy of a lack of investment in infrastructure, or handling poor maintenance contracts. The RAF Officer Training Academy (RAFOTA) at RAF Cranwell, for example, had classrooms with leaking roofs and accommodation blocks that frequently lacked hot water and heating.
Inspectors also found that the needs of female recruits or trainees were not being considered fully. Women are often accommodated away from their male peers to ensure privacy. But this has led to some being isolated, especially in establishments where there are very few female recruits. In other instances, staff did not always ensure that female recruits were issued with uniforms or equipment that fitted them properly, increasing the risk of injury.”
This is appalling!
We need comparative data to know if it is or isn’t. We would need data from similar sized air forces, say France and also larger better budgeted ones like USA. In isolation it’s just a number.
Yes comparative data would be useful but experienced people have an intuitive feel about most things and the numbers given would suggest there are problems. 7 years to train a helo pilot before he is ready to join an OCU. No, that doesn’t make any sense – it suggests there are long pause periods between the training courses. MFTS was contracted to provide a significant part of this requirement and is clearly failing. I would like to know what Service Level Agreements are in place with MoD to at least stem the cost to the taxpayer.
Meanwhile flying training has collapsed, 2 serviceable Hawk aircraft at anyone time. Pilot candidates on hold for so long thay have aged out.
How do you know only 2 out of 28 Hawk Mk2s are available at anyone time?
28 Adour units ordered, no spares, a fault was found with the compressor blades which was compounded by a faulty French manufactured part. The Australians are also having issues. We have 28 T2s and no spare engines. How long it is going to take to rectify is anyone’s guess.
Can we stream AFT short notice with the USAF at Holloman while the Hawk issues are sorted? Like Germany.
A question was asked in Parliament before the reassess. Yes if necessary we could train our pilots overseas. The US flying training programme is chocker at the moment and the same is said of Canada and as I have said Australia. 20% of the UKs flying training were foreign students.
Qatar. The usual politics.
Go to Leonardo training school, they already have some Germans and Japanese.
We are aware of the problem with the Adour. That doesn’t answer my question though. How do you know only 2 jets are available at any one time? Are you just guessing? or do you have first hand experience because you work at RAF Valley on one of the Hawk Mk2 Sqns?
A chap by the name of Tim Davies ex Tornado and instructor at Valley told me.
👍
Here you go.
Doesn’t really matter Mark if all 28 were active. Forty years ago we had 150 plus; twenty years over 100 and now 28. Effectively, if we started today we can train up 20 to 30 fast jets pilots for 2027/2028. Wow!
I regularly have a look on flight radar and see multiple hawks on training flights at the same time. I often see 4 or 5 at the same time in varios training routes.
They aren’t hard to keep track of.
I agree with you there. Not every day but not unusual to see four Hawks up.
And you would be correct, not all are RAF. Some are Qatari using Valley call signs. The Hawk mk 2 have limitations on the engines at the moment and the problem will get worse before it gets better.
Just need to keep track of the Reg numbers, I believe all the the RAF T2’s are on ZK reg’s and the Qatar T2’s are all ZB’s.
Here we go
Err? Just go on flighradar any day of the week there is usually a good 6-7 of them up at a time. Regularly see a few of them a week over the IOM conducting training.
For balance from the inevitable hysteria from those only interested in a rant after reading the headline and not the actual report which is on MoD news, there were plenty of establishments rated good and Catterick outstanding that did not have a leaky roof. But the length of time training pilots surprised me, I know there are plenty of issues but I still did not think it took THAT long. As usual, so few assets, and a lot of the issues seem to be up at OCU/QFI stage. 2 entire flying schools ( 1 FTS and 7 FTS ) have… Read more »
I honestly can’t believe the time. What are they doing? This must be a massive waste of time, resources and by the time a pilot gets finished at the OCU half the career is over! I knew things were bad at training but I didn’t think it was this bad. Honestly any rise in defence spending must go to fixing this cluster F*** first. If this is not fixed soon the trainers will shrink in numbers to a point where recovery of numbers becomes really difficult. I really really hope this is an exception as if more departments are run… Read more »
At this rate if you joined up in 1939 you *might* be flying in 1945.
Or might not. I’d echo Daniele above that this doesn’t work for a very obvious reason. If you recruit at 21 you only have, in most cases until the early-mid 30’s until pilots are looking for new horizons and more money to support families etc. So if you burn up a year or so in basic training and then 5 years to get to an OCU and then a year of type conversion you have written off 7-8 years and might have only 5 years (max) of use from the pilot. I’d suggest that the accounting side of that sucks… Read more »
Yes that is all true. A good friend of mine got on the Apache course. Sailed through training and was waiting for his posting. Except there were no spaces for him. He was offered a tour in Brunei, which he did for two years, then extended, as there still was no space for him. After the extension he had to do a staff tour at JHC, which was followed by a tour at Abbey Wood. So 7 years after passing the Apache course he had yet to fly it again. At which point he had enough a became an air… Read more »
Well to be honest, unlike the rest of you, due to the colour of my skin I would be fast tracked, so I dont see a problem here. But then I already earned my wings as a child
😂👏🏻
🏴🇬🇧
ah diversity at its finest 😀
Hopefully not for much longer. Skills are the number issue people should be judged on nothing else.
You have an amazing likeness to Aladdin in your child portrait. You can’t be the only non white person on here? (I may have uncovered a 30+ white males club)
At least I can say I’m not racist. I’m on a forum with a brown person🙈😂😂😂
My ma was a gypsy so do l count as mixed race?
😂
I’m scratching my head trying to understand why it takes less time to train a fighter pilot who needs to master g-forces, munitions, terms of engagement etc, than it does a heavy lift pilot.
Agreed. And helis the longest? I thought the transfer of 2 FTS ( the old RAF rotary training outlfit at Shawbury ) into the DHFS was one of the successes. It’s not short of heli assets either, and the army until recently had some duplication with other training at M Wallop. Though having never flown what do I know? RAF Trainees used to ( I assume they still do? ) complete EFT in Grobs at a UAS then basic in Tucano/Texan before going to helicopters, so may be the Heli stage is more considerable? And the timeframe is only as… Read more »
Ah Daniele … the wonders of privatisation at its best …. P.S. where’s all our gas …🤣🤣
More to do with marginal savings being made as budgets were so tight.
Bigger issue is the skills loss.
But the flip side is that private sector can and does pay top dollar for ex services instructors and polite which the services cannot do within military pay grades.
But the obvious problem is lack of direct control due contractual red tape….there again if you were a private sector contractor you wouldn’t want the bright ideas club telling you what to do on a daily basis….
And I’m scratching my head trying to understand just how long it takes to train any pilot. It beggars belief.
Well what can one say, so many poor choices made in past to farm it all out to the cheapest bidder- no room to push through additional numbers. RN has few issues with infrastructure such as accom and teaching area’s, RAF spend all their time meeting the needs of the WOKE brigade. These times are shocking and all the time we are paying these folks who will give little in time in return as most of their contract will have been used up. Sack the Tops Brass. Sorry for the lads and lasses who want to serve. You join up… Read more »
To Dam Long. It’s all gone to pot and that is what happens when you take it out of house. Shocking waste of time and money having potential aircrew sitting on their ass for so long and getting paid but contributing little to the Defence Package. Sack the Top Brass of the RAF.
I suggest that the RAF go back to gliders and Grobs or similar at least you have a base to select from that is familiar with flyingd
I really want to be a naval aviator when I’m older, flying F-35’s off the deck of the carriers but all this did was slightly discourge me
If I was wanting to be a fast jet pilot I would be Looking into what I need to get to that goal. What subjects at school are useful. Do I need to do university or college before joining? Do the services offer some kind of support and recommendations for direction of travel through Education. One thing I would say is although this seems a long time it will probably shrink a bit in the next few years. Also during these training years you are flying various aircraft and learning valuable training that should allow you to Become one of… Read more »
I had a quick look on the internet and the Vermont national guard have the process to fly F35A will take 3-4 years. I think this includes the OCU or equivalent. I’m not up to speed with terms so found it hard to tell
https://www.158fw.ang.af.mil/BECOME_A_FIGHTER_PILOT/
I think the main follow up questions need to be how long did training take 5,10,15,20,30 years ago?
Is it an easy fix to speed it up and is this needed?
Will the U.K. forces have enough pilots in the future using current projections?
How much room is there for increasing pilot numbers and how long would different percentages of increases take?
Now where is that MP’s contact details.
Fast jet traning has always been in the 3-5 years timeframe. And even 20 years ago it was common for new pilots to become Hawk instructors and teach for a couple of years at Valley before heading off to Tornado, Harrier OCU’s ect.
Good to know. It’s important there aren’t delays if it takes that long. The helicopter training seems really long and I would of thought fast jet would of been the longest due to it being a solo job and the complexities involved.
Helicopters I would think can fly more often, have a co pilot.
I did wonder if helicopters had been slowed down on purpose due to the drop in helicopter numbers over the past 10 years as that could mean to many pilots per aircraft for a while.
Yes, I thought the benchmark was 3, not 4.8. Too few assets mate.
I think this is where we need to get more of modern hawk or another type, so we at least have birds to train on eg gripen? not sure why have for years not bought more new kits to train on. 1-2 a year and over a few decades you slowly upgrade. Then it is not that expensive, and it is all current. You also retain skills and continue manufacture for the next thing. Doesn’t have to be boom and bust.
Read an article over the last couple of weeks bemoaning the lack of advancement of pilots on type within the RAF. Most specifically the fast jet fleets. From memory, too many instructor pilots are effectively taken away from their squadrons for either training with Foreign Air Forces as part of the purchase deal, or to make our Aircraft Carrier air wings look moderately viable. Consequently, many pilots who could / should be advancing ‘on type’ simply cannot be assessed by the few instructors who are on projects elsewhere. Seems this bottleneck has been known about for at least a few… Read more »
Gripen is far to expensive and complex to be used for pilot training
A basic Tejas mk1 would probably do the job. Ditch the Indian radar as not UK equipment saves some of the cost, 2/3rds non-radar trainers, have Leonardo fit the Vixen 1000E +IRST to the other third. There’s radar comparability to the CAPTOR on the Typhoon. Not identical, but similar enjoying euro-standard equipment to make CRA cross training simple from Tejas to Typhoon.
Bigger, faster, more capable than the Hawk, but a lot cheaper than most of what is out there.
That would be far to sensible. I’m kind of thinking it maybe time to pass the T2hawks to the red arrows, aggressor fleet by 2025-28. I can’t see the U.K. making another trainer even though it would be great. So that leaves the new American trainer mainly. Or we try and start some nato/international training centre in the U.K. and perhaps Italy using the M346, giving it an upgrade if it really needs it. I would consider the Korean TA-50 if the U.K. is going alone if it’s not super expensive to run. It brings an added combat role if… Read more »
Leonardo International Flight Training School – but it is in Italy, have Japanese AF and German AF pilots and others.
The IFTS programme, already chosen by Qatar, Germany, Singapore and Japan, corresponds to phase 4 “Lead-In to Fighter Training – LIFT” of the Italian Air Force training syllabus. This phase, based on the M-346 integrated training system, prepares the way for subsequent deployment on fighter aircraft.
Just a little disingenuous. The truth is rather longer when Initial Officer Training is added, plus the gap between IOT and start of EFT and more importantly perhaps is the time it takes from joining a Squadron to being declared operational ready due to limited aircraft availability. Only then does the pilot become a useful asset. MFTS has failed miserably at huge cost for little if any real benefit.
So are we looking at nearer 10 years? If I walk into the recruitment today and they give me a start date immediately.
A number of sources suggest commercial pilot training takes around 2 years full time. Why military training takes on average 3 times as long, i don’t understand. If this cannot be accelerated when necessary, that explains the growing appetite for UCAVs, which even if operated by qualified pilots now, probably don’t need to be.
Is part of the explanation that we have such a reduced fleet esp of combat aircraft that there is little urgency in training new pilots?
so does this mean that for every pilot we lose in battle, it will take 4/5/6/ years to replace. does this imply the next war could last decades???
if you consider that loge for each pilot
should not the RAF start training triple what we do now. just in case.
something seems very wrong here.
thanks
Quite a long time, this is where the Russians have an advantage over us, as they can train pilots in 4 weeks, week 1 simulator training on the Zanusi, week 2, storage and use/maintenance of rape kit, week 3 combat survival (stealing clothes and furniture) week 4, 6 hours flying a shed! Job done, combat ready!!!
Don’t forget the day long civilian Tom Tom GPS device course. Also the loft rockets wildly into the sky course.
Final course is when you crash make sure you leave everything on the aircraft complete and make no effort to destroy anything or record where you went down on a map for your own forces to try and destroy.
Yes mate my apologies I forget about the advanced course of 2 weeks! Closely followed by the next 2 weeks promotion course consisting of fraud, theft and fencing stolen items 😂👍!
The entry requirements for the advanced course is that you have to of scored at least 100 innocent civilian deaths in the simulator.
Sad to say our piss taking is due to that fact, civvy deaths and murders! The quicker this mob of fuckwit Nazis are dead the better! But, that simulator also does an economy wash!
And that’s just for the tank commanders!!
😂
Outsource it all to Serco. Problem solved.😫
Serco were bidding for the MFTS contract when it was first launched, until the company decided the defence wasn’t a sector that it wanted to be a key player in anymore. Long and expensive bidding process with questionable return on investment. Serco Defence also burnt its fingers with a failed UK AAR tanker replacement bid that offered clapped out ex-British Airways 757s for conversion to the role. The rest, as they say,is history.
I thought the Chief of the Air Staff was given as his ‘one and only task’ from Ben Wallace 2 years ago – to sort this clusterf**k out.
I don’t know how much modern tech helps, but I thought flying helicopters was quite a bit more tricky than fixed wing aircraft. That may be one reason why it takes longer to qualify.
The question shoulde be, How long should it take to train a British pilot, As the situation is at the moment stupid, we have potential pilots leaving even before they have finished training as it takes so long.