NATO concerned over RAF training
forargyle.com
"Nato has confirmed that there are very serious concerns about the standard of RAF pilots deployed to Afghanistan.
This is not a question of the basic skills of the pilots but centred on how keen those skills can remain when, for reasons of cost cutting, the RAF has progressively reduced the number of monthly flying hours.
The Nato minimum is that pilots should fly 180 hours per annum. In the RAF, figures obtained from the Ministry of Defence by a national newspaper revealed that at the end of 2008 crews of warplanes like the Tornado F3 fighter, the Tornado GR4 ground attack plane and the Harrier fighter bomber had flown an average of just over 100 hours that year.
Crews of the new Eurofighter Typhoon had done a little more, at 140 hours in the year, but were still below Nato’s minimum standard.
There has evidently been serious concern among crews at a situation where the best pilots in the historically potent RAF are disgraced by their
failure to meet Nato’s minimum.
With some pilots getting no more than 5 hours in the air each month, one pilot has been quoted as saying that there are people who would struggle to remain safe in their car with 5 hrs driving a month.
The RAF are wriggling in response to the public airing of this proof that cost cutting is causing this most basic dereliction. It is saying defensively but vaguely that the MoD figures on flying hours ‘can be misleading’.
The minimum standard of 180 hours per annum is just that – a minimum standard. It cannot create the flying aces of legend but should ensure that pilots deployed to active service are able to deliver ’safe, proficient and capable air power’.
In the ongoing argument, the fatal Tornado crash in Glen Kinglas in 2009 has been cited as evidence of the current situation. 27 year old Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Thompson, a Glaswegian and 43 year old Nigel Morton from Fife wiped themselves out on Binnein an Fhidhleir. They had been unable to complete a tight turn at speed in their Tornado F3, coming through the gap at Rest and be Thankful above Loch Restil to turn sharp left immediately into Glen Kinglas.
The plane was almost but not quite round when it hit the side of the mountain about half way between the A83 and the top of the ridge.
An RAF report into the incident concluded that Flight Lieutenant Thompson’s lack of recent flying hours was probably a contributory factor, saying that pilots from his squadron (43 Squadron) at RAF Leuchas flew as few as ten hours per month. This squadron was disbanded shortly afterwards as the Typhoon progressively takes precedence over the Tornado.
This situation gives rise to serious public as well as military concern. It was nothing more than miraculous that no members of the public were killed when the Tornado which crashed into the hillside not far above the A83 shortly after 11.40am on Thursday 2nd July 2009.
The A83 is the arterial road into Argyll carrying steady commercial and domestic traffic. The impact of the crash was so severe that debris was small and very widely scattered.
Loch Fyne, as with very many glens in the Scottish Highlands, is a regular training area for warplanes. Their passage low overhead at speed is disturbing enough to people and livestock as it is.
Knowing now that those in the driving seat are flying such manoevres with a monthly flying experience equivalent to a pensioner using their car for local shopping trips, is more than worrying.
It is also noted that what little flying has been done for some time down the glen over Loch Fyne – a very welcome diminution – has been at relatively generous heights above ground level.
While this may be all that can safely be done in the current circumstances, it too testifies to the loss of skill levels in our frontline pilots, with cost savings cutting into the living muscle of the armed services.
We are asking Argyll and Bute Council to make contact with the MoD to discuss procedures for training flights in the current regime to be managed to ensure public safety. We have suggested an agreed formula where minimum flying height levels are set for pilots according to the number of hours recently flown. This is now a major public safety issue.
The families of Flight Lieutenants Kenneth Thompson and Nigel Morton will find this dereliction of duty of care by the MoD hard to assimilate."