Latvia turns to Inzpire for UAS training

Inzpire is to deliver a five-week UAS and ISR course to personnel from the Latvian Air Force (LAF) involving classroom courses and live-flying training, the UK company revealed on 4 January.

A contract worth an undisclosed amount will see LAF personnel study a tailored version of the Inzpire Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) and Remotely Piloted Air Systems (RPAS) ISR Tactics course.

This course has been expanded to cover mission preparation and tactical employment of UAS. It has also been modified ‘to suit the customer’s unique requirements with the inclusion of local area mission planning tasks’, Inzpire noted.

Andy Bain, head of the ISR division at Inzpire, said that ‘inclusive UAS and ISR training will enable the LAF to further develop their own indigenous ISR capability and decisively manage and integrate their UAS into the NATO Joint ISR (JISR) system for wider ISR collection.’

Latvia is procuring a new UAS platform for ISR; the exact type is unknown although reports last year in the Turkish media indicated interest from the Baltic republic in buying the Bayraktar TB2. Latvia is also a partner in the multinational NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Force, comprising five RQ-4D Phoenix UAVs based on the Block 40 Global Hawk.