Indian Air Force instructors are set to begin training Royal Air Force fast jet pilots at RAF Valley under a new agreement that may also help ease long-running pressure on Britain’s military flying training pipeline.
The British High Commission in New Delhi confirmed that three Indian Qualified Flying Instructors (QFIs) will deploy to RAF Valley for an initial two-year period, marking the first time Indian instructors will directly support fast jet training for RAF pilots at the base.
RAF Valley, located in Anglesey, is central to the UK’s fast jet training system, hosting training aircraft such as the Hawk T2 and Texan T1. The announcement comes after repeated concerns raised in defence circles about bottlenecks across the wider UK Military Flying Training System.
The High Commission said the move was agreed following the 19th UK–India Air Staff Talks in New Delhi, describing it as part of a broader effort to expand military training engagement between the two air forces.
Air Vice Marshal Ian Townsend, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, said the agreement was “a significant step” in strengthening ties between the two services. “Bringing Indian QFIs into UK Military Flying Training Systems deepens our cooperation, enhances interoperability and reinforces our shared commitment to excellence in aircrew training,” he said.
“Together, we are investing in the foundation of a long-term collaboration and shaping a partnership that is both enduring and strategic in its outlook.”
The British Defence Adviser in New Delhi, Commodore Chris Saunders, also emphasised the wider strategic framing of the initiative, linking it to the long-term UK–India defence agenda. “The forthcoming deployment of Indian Qualified Flying Instructors to the UK represents another significant milestone in our expanding defence relationship,” he said.
“It reinforces the mutual trust and shared experience that underpins our training cooperation and exemplifies the increasingly sophisticated levels of interoperability we are building together across our services.”
The agreement follows a separate development earlier this year, when an Indian Air Force officer was deployed as an instructor to RAF College Cranwell, the UK’s air officer training academy. UK officials said this meant all three of Britain’s military academies now host Indian instructors from their respective services, including at Britannia Royal Naval College Dartmouth and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
The High Commission added that the Indian instructors will remain under Indian Air Force command while carrying out instructional duties under RAF commanders at Valley.
After losing several jets to Pakistan recently, I really think these are not the people who should be teaching us anything….
Maybe they need the money for their space program, while ignoring their chronic poverty situation 🤦♂️
This is so short-sighted.
The Indians did lose jets. Those jets were European-designed, fourth-generation jets equipped with European-design modern BVRAAMs. You know, the same types of aircraft and missiles that the RAF will be flying into combat with. So, you don’t think that knowledge of where a combat doctrine based around a fourth-gen delta-canard equipped with advanced BVRAAMs fails would be useful to the RAF?
Beyond this, the Indians then carried out a successful strike against >10 airbases concurrently, using again, European planes, equipped with the same BVRAAMs and the same cruise missiles, the Storm Shadow, that the RAF uses. Do you not think that training from the people who have used your weapons, used very similar jets to your own, against a target similarly defended to, for example, Russian targets, would be at all useful?
How would their experience help us against russian targets?
Pakistan’s air force is made up of Chinese, American and old French jets and same goes for their ground AA systems, mostly Chinese
But I get what you mean, we learn from their failures
The Chinese HQ-9B (the system purchased by Pakistan to defend their airspace) is derived at its core from the Russian S-300, albeit with major performance upgrades. To understand how the Indians were able to defeat that system, using the same British/French cruise missiles, would be incredibly valuable, because it provides applicable information on how the Russian S-300 would perform against those systems. It’s similar to what we’ve been getting from Ukraine, but more useful, because the Indians are using the Rafale, comparable to the Typhoon, to launch those cruise missiles, compared to the UkAF, using an aging stock of Soviet Su-24s.
Similarly, the Indians also operate the S-400, and undoubtably have experience in how their own Rafales perform against the system – experience that will translate through into training with the RAF. That’s obviously very useful, when considering that the S-400 remains the premier Russian GBAD (the S-500 is limited).
And yeah, we learn from their failures. At the end of the day, the Chinese missile arsenal function much akin to the Russian one, just better. The R-77, for example, can be compared to a poor man’s PL-15. But understanding why the Indians failed to use their Meteors, and why they couldn’t evade, is incredibly useful to the RAF.
The Indians and the Pakistanis are the only nations around today with experience in a peer-level air conflict. To get training from either would be useful, but particularly from the Indians, because their systems and doctrine are far and away the more comparable to the RAF’s.
I suspect the Indian losses were down to poor tactics and lack of preparation.
Both S300 systems and Bavar-373 (derived from S300) proved no threat to Israel’s attack on Iran in June 2025.
Equally, Venezuela’s S300s proved ineffective during the Raid to capture Maduro.
Good news. I’m up for any solution that will ease the bottleneck of students awaiting training to become fast jet pilots.
I’m not going to criticise. I’m going to give my support.
Yes, but isn’t it shameful that Great Britain is in this position in the first place?
The RAF FTS worked fine until politicians messed with it like everything else.
Not really? Not sure why we shouldn’t want training from one of only two nations to have modern peer-level experience in both air-to-air, and air-to-ground operations, most of which were undertaken with the same systems used by the RAF.
Hi Leh.
Are we clear what type of training this is?
You’re going straight to complex combat scenarios and 4FTS does basic through to learning to fly a fast jet.
We surely have QFIs for that. Indeed, the CFS trained the trainers until politicians wrecked that as well.
Are you wanting Indian QFIs then in our OCUs and actual front line Sqns that also practice for complex air operations?
All training is good, but again, with the RAFs experience it’s tragic it’s even necessary.
Poor blokes, 2yrs at Valley. Show some compassion
How pathetic can we get. Three Indian instructors, which is fine in itself, but are we so badly off.
Exactly.
It’s often said the RAF is one of the few western air forces able to join the US in first night of war complex air operations, carried out by professional air forces.
We aren’t nobodies. The training pipeline has been cut, cut again, and squeezed by politicians making cuts, then part privatised, using the very civilian instructors who were once themselves RAF pilots. ( Elementary, 6FTS, Basic and multi crewed, 3 FTS, fast air, 4FTS, with RAF Linton on Ouses 1 FTS old role of streaming through to fast jets thrown in as they cut that as well.
Not surprised.
India now has a larger nominal GDP than the UK.
India’s economy is growing ata fast pace (around 6%–7%)
compared to the relatively stagnant or slow growth of the UK economy.