Royal Air Force pilots have trained to fly in Texas since the Second World War when seven schools helped meet the demand for aircrew at the height of the conflict. Today RAF instructors and students still train in the Lone Star State as part of a unique NATO programme.
Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT) at Sheppard Air Force Base, a two-hour drive north of Fort Worth, has trained pilots from across the Alliance for over 40 years.
Colonel Mitch Cok is the Wing Commander of the 80th Flying Training Wing USAF which hosts and runs ENJJPT. He said:
“This is a phenomenal programme because not only does it have international participants but it’s also internationally managed, 14 nations join together to decide how to fund and run the programme and what’s going to happen next.”
Colonel Mitch Cok
Wing Commander of the 80th Flying Training Wing USAF
The former F-15 Eagle pilot added: “We have a lot of instructor pilots with different experience and backgrounds who bring a wealth of knowledge and information to us. We just had our unit effectiveness inspection and that identified that one of our strengths in comparison to other pilot training bases was the expert instruction. We attribute a lot of that to the international partners who bring that experience to our programme."
Although ENJJPT started in 1982, overseas students have been trained at Sheppard since the 1960s. Today student pilots from 14 NATO nations spend a little over a year at the North Texas base, progressing from academics to flying the T-6 Texan and then the venerable T-38 Talon.
The UK Senior National Representative at Sheppard is Squadron Leader Gibbons. The experienced Tornado GR4 pilot leads a team of instructors who train students from all participating nations.
“The programme operates in a nation agnostic manner on a day-today basis. Using myself as an example, I could go and fly in a four-ship with seven different people from seven different nations, it makes no difference what country a student or instructor I was flying with came from.”
Squadron Leader Gibbons
For Squadron Leader Gibbons the standout benefit of ENJJPT is the relationships built there: “Most of the other European Air Forces are of a similar size to the RAF and, as I’ve learnt, you get to know most of the people in your era of the Air Force. The benefit the British students who come here will have is that they’ll know their equivalents in other NATO Air Forces”.
“Those relationships last throughout a career and it's a huge benefit to the students coming through this system that they’ll develop them here. They get to learn about other nations as well, not only culturally but also to build professional knowledge of other NATO Air Forces. This is something they’ll have to learn throughout their career, and which they get organically here.”
The scale of operations at Sheppard is huge. Every hour, 10 hours per day, 15-20 sorties are launched to train the 200 students who graduate each year. And all on a station which is the USAF equivalent of RAF Cosford, training aircraft engineers and maintainers.
One of the most notable differences at Sheppard, which lies close to the border with Oklahoma, is the weather.
“Learning to fly in poor weather is a barrier, however some of the most memorable sorties from flying training, and those on which I learnt the most, were when the weather was poor. The students from Northern European Nations will need to adapt to the different weather patterns when they return home."
Squadron Leader Gibbons
He added, “The weather in northern Texas is pretty binary, it’s either lovely or it’s bad to the extent where we can’t go flying because there are warnings for thunderstorms or tornados, or there’s a foot of snow on the ground. The flip side is it makes it much easier for us to deliver pilots on time and as planned without having to use additional sorties because of unexpected poor weather. So there are plusses and minuses."
On successful completion of the course the UK students return home. After a short synthetic based course at RAF Valley, they then start their Operational Conversion Courses on either Typhoon or Lightning.
For Flight Lieutenant Tabs the course has been very different to the UK flying training system, “the method of training, the scale, the weather, and the heat are all different factors. It’s pretty relentless, we haven’t stopped since I arrived.” For the students the international construct is also seen as valuable.
“I could fly in a four-ship with eight different nationalities conceivably which can bring challenges in terms of language but typically speaking it’s always enriching. Equally people are always in the flight room, and I’ve had the chance for example to talk to Norwegians about how they do business and the Germans about their flying training system."
Flight Lieutenant Tabs
Flight Lieutenant Tabs, “And it also adds an element of context, we have capability briefs from all the different nations which adds a level of ‘why do we do NATO?’, why we’re here as a single entity and why we need standardisation.
Also, the links that we forge here, and I can guarantee that I’ll remain in touch with my classmates, potentially one day could be incredibly valuable. We have a common language about one way of doing business.
The way the cross-countries work here you can take a jet into their jet airways and with the full range of the T-6 you can really get to some places, and T-38s are not bad either. It’s a real confidence boost”
The cross-country navigation exercises, which can see flying as far afield as Chicago, is one aspect of the training that is popular with instructors and students alike.
Situated by the city of Wichita Falls, the international members of ENJJPT have been taken under the wing by the local.
“We’re made to feel very welcome by the local population here. All of the ENJJPT countries have a country sponsor in the local community who welcome and help us, for example, how to open a bank account or hosting us for thanksgiving and showing us a little bit of American culture.”
Squadron Leader Gibbons
Asked to summarise the programme Squadron Leader Gibbons commented: “ENNJPT delivers on a variety of levels. It delivers extra pilot training capacity at a time of need, and on a personal level offers trainees the opportunity to expand their knowledge of NATO Air Forces, learn about operating in a different country, and forge life-long connections.”
For more on ENJJPTs please listen to the InsideAir Podcast: https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/insideair/
