Air Battlespace Training Centre

The ABTC is an HQ Air Command lodger unit housed in 1 Hangar at RAF Waddington. Prior to 1 Apr 08, it hosted the UK Mission Training through Distributed Simulation (MTDS) Capability Concept Demonstrator (CCD). The MTDS CCD project, a "lifed" project, due to terminate at the end of Mar 08, was to de-risk the use of synthetic training environments to deliver operational team and collective training for the air component of the Joint Battlespace. The MTDS CCD phase was completed as planned, however, due to the success of the programme the ABTC facility was maintained from Apr 08 to deliver Distributed Synthetic Air Land Training (DSALT), focussing on the Pre-Deployment Training (PDT) to forces deploying to Afghanistan.

The UK MTDS CCD programme has shown that valuable operational training can be delivered via synthetic means; DSALT offers such opportunities pending the proposed introduction of UK MTDS circa 2013. DSALT is building upon the existing MTDS CCD baseline, providing an interim training capability, for UK air, land and maritime force elements in National and Coalition synthetic environments, focusing on Team, Collective, Joint and Combined operations.

Within the ABTC there are a number of targeted-fidelity aircraft simulators which are capable of representing Typhoon, Tornado GR4, AWACS and AH-64. The ABTC also has targeted-fidelity emulators capable of representing GR9, A-10, F-16, C-130, AH and SH. The recent addition of a Fire Planning Cell (FPC) area and 2 Fire Support Team (FST) training facilities allows the representation of Joint Fires and CAS at all levels. The ABTC also hosts an exercise management room, individual formation planning/briefing capabilities and mass briefing/debriefing facilities.

In the short-term, the ABTC facility has currently been funded under the Conflict Prevention Fund and as such will be able to continue to support Op HERRICK PDT events. The ABTC calendar is filling up quickly, with up to 26 weeks assigned to exercise MOUNTAIN DRAGON which is PDT for units about to deploy in support of OP HERRICK. Additionally during the remainder of the year the training task has been split between the Typhoon (exercise EAGLE AVENGER), Tornado GR4 (exercise MERLIN MIGHT) and AWACS forces (exercise FALCON FURY) to be the primary training audience with other forces being trained alongside. Intelligence Officers, JFACTSU, SF and others are investigating the use of the facility for basic and continuation training. The research element of the ABTC has not been overlooked with 6 weeks of the year set aside.

In the longer term, in 2013 the new build vision for the MTDS project will hopefully come into fruition. A custom built facility will be made to allow full connection to all UK simulators. This will then allow all front line operators to enter into the MTDS battlespace from their own Main Operating Base and exercise with other users in a single co-ordinated war. Operators from LAND, AIR and Maritime forces will be able to use a co-ordinated planning process and finally train closer to the way we fight than was ever previously possible.