EDA to conduct fifth HTIC programme

The fifth edition of the European Defence Agency's (EDA's) Helicopter Tactics Instructors Courses (HTIC) will start in May at Royal Air Force (RAF) Linton-on-Ouse in the UK, the agency announced on 21 March.

The HTIC will commence with a four-week classroom phase including simulator exercises at Linton-on-Ouse. This will be followed by a three week deployment to Arvidsjaur Airfield in Lapland, Sweden, where the participants will engage in live flying exercises operating Swedish Black Hawks, Austrian Hueys, Kiowa and Black Hawks, and German CH-53s.

For the first time almost all of the staff instructors - around 90 percent - will be graduates of previous courses, marking a key milestone in the EDA's self-sufficiency goals for the programme.

The instructors will come from Sweden, Austria and the UK with supporting air assets including UK Hawks, Swedish Gripens and Czech Alca Jets.

A DA-20 Falcon from Cobham Aviation will provide electronic warfare and command and control support, augmented with ground based electronic warfare assets provided by RAF Spadeadam's EW Range.

Around 35 trainees and instructors will participate in the ground phase, and the number of participants will increase up to 120 with all the supporting assets, engineers and operations personnel during the flying phase.

The HTIC provides aircrew from participating nations with the skills and knowledge to teach advanced tactics to front-line aircrews from within their own national organisations and to assist in delivering the EDA's Helicopter Exercise Programme, the Helicopter Tactics Course and the future HTIC. Successful graduates from the course are awarded a qualification recognised by other member states. HTIC development courses run over two years: in the first year, prospective instructors refine their own knowledge of advanced helicopter tactics. In the second year, the emphasis shifts to develop the participants' ability to teach those tactics. In turn, instructors who have demonstrated above average abilities in delivering the course will be individually selected to become supervising instructors for future HTIC.