Good aircraft handling is the foundation of military helicopter operations, but it is not the end state. At some point during a military pilot’s development, the emphasis has to move from simply operating the helicopter accurately to using the aircraft, its crew and its capabilities to achieve a mission.
That transition is what tactical helicopter training is really about. Low-level flying, formation, tactical navigation, confined-area operations, NVG and tactical approaches are all useful skills, but teaching them as a collection of individual flying exercises misses much of the point. The crew needs to understand when to use them, why they are appropriate and, equally importantly, when another option would be better.
This is particularly relevant when developing helicopter capability for smaller air forces. Training can very quickly become unnecessarily sophisticated and expensive if it is based on what a larger military does rather than what the customer actually needs to achieve. The aim should be credible operational capability, built progressively around the aircraft, crews, threats and missions that the customer actually has.
Start With the Mission
Tactical flying should always have a purpose. Before deciding how to fly the aircraft, the crew needs to understand the task, threat, terrain, weather, available support and the capabilities and limitations of the aircraft itself. Only then can sensible decisions be made about routing, height, speed, formation, timings and how the aircraft will approach and leave the objective.
Mission planning therefore forms a significant part of tactical training. The sortie should not begin when the aircraft starts and finish when it lands. Planning, briefing, execution and debriefing are all part of the same training event, and weaknesses in any one of those areas can compromise the mission.
This is also where students begin to understand that there is rarely a single correct tactical solution. Two crews can approach the same task differently and both produce workable plans. The instructor’s role is not simply to teach a preferred technique, but to develop the crew’s ability to assess the problem, understand the risks and justify the decisions they make.
That judgement becomes increasingly important as training progresses. A technically excellent plan that is too complicated to execute reliably is rarely a good plan, particularly when operating with inexperienced crews or limited supporting assets.
Build Tactical Skills Progressively
There is little value exposing crews to complex tactical scenarios before the underlying flying skills are secure. A pilot who is still using most of their capacity to maintain height and speed at low level has very little left to consider the threat, navigation, other aircraft or changing mission requirements.
Training therefore needs to build progressively. Basic navigation develops into tactical navigation, low-level flying develops into terrain exploitation, formation flying develops into tactical formation, and night flying progresses towards operational NVG employment. As individual skills become established, they can be combined and placed within increasingly demanding mission scenarios.
This progression also allows instructors to identify where problems actually originate. If a crew performs poorly during a complicated multi-aircraft mission, simply repeating the entire mission may achieve very little. The weakness may be formation keeping, navigation, planning, communications or basic capacity. Breaking the problem down and correcting the underlying skill is usually more productive than repeatedly exposing the crew to complexity.
There is sometimes a temptation to make tactical training difficult because difficulty looks realistic. Complexity should only be added when it produces useful training. A relatively simple scenario that forces crews to make good decisions can provide considerably more value than an elaborate exercise in which everyone is overloaded from the beginning.
Train the Crew, Not Just the Pilots
Military helicopters rarely operate as two pilots isolated in a cockpit. Depending on the aircraft and mission, rear crew, loadmasters, door gunners, sensor operators, mission commanders and other specialists may all contribute directly to the operation.
They need to be included in the training.
Lookout, navigation, communications, threat detection, landing-site assessment and mission management can all involve several members of the crew. Tactical training should progressively develop these relationships until the aircraft is being operated as a crew rather than as a collection of individuals performing separate tasks.
This can require a change of approach in organisations where training has traditionally concentrated almost entirely on pilots. A capable rear crew member who understands the mission and knows what information the pilots require can materially increase the effectiveness of the aircraft. Conversely, a pilot who does not know how to use the rest of the crew is voluntarily giving away capacity.
The same principle extends beyond the individual helicopter. Formation leads, supporting aircraft and command elements all need to understand their respective responsibilities. Once several aircraft are involved, apparently minor weaknesses in communication or standardisation can quickly become significant.
Tactical Training Has to Reflect the Threat
Threat training should be relevant to the environment in which the customer expects to operate. There is little value constructing an elaborate threat scenario around systems the crew is extremely unlikely to encounter while failing to prepare them properly for the threats they face routinely.
For some forces, the primary concerns may be sophisticated air-defence systems and electronic warfare. For others, small-arms fire, heavy machine guns, RPGs, wires, poor landing areas and operations around uncontrolled ground forces may represent the more credible risk.
The aircraft’s defensive systems also matter. Crews need to understand what equipment they actually have, what protection it provides and where its limitations lie. Tactics designed around another aircraft’s sensors, weapons or Defensive Aids System may be completely inappropriate when transferred to a less capable platform.
Threat awareness should therefore influence planning rather than become something introduced artificially halfway through a sortie. Route, altitude, speed, formation, approach direction and time spent exposed should all reflect the crew’s assessment of the threat before the aircraft gets airborne.
As training develops, those assumptions can then be challenged. A threat may appear somewhere unexpected, intelligence may change or a planned route may become unavailable. The training value comes from seeing how the crew responds and whether they can adapt without losing sight of the mission.
Use Synthetic Training Where It Adds Value
Tactical helicopter training can consume a considerable number of aircraft hours if every scenario is introduced and practised in the air. For customers operating within limited budgets, that is neither necessary nor particularly efficient.
A large amount of tactical development can take place on the ground. Mission planning exercises, tactical decision exercises, desktop simulation and VR/MR systems can all be used to introduce scenarios and force crews to think through problems before they encounter them in an aircraft.
Synthetic training becomes particularly valuable when several aircraft or supporting elements are required. Producing a large multi-ship tactical scenario live requires aircraft availability, fuel, maintenance, crews and often significant supporting resources. A synthetic environment can expose crews to the same planning and decision-making problems repeatedly and at considerably lower cost.
The important point is not to use simulation simply because it is cheaper. The correct question is whether the training objective requires an aircraft. If it does, use the aircraft. If the objective is primarily planning, communications, threat reaction or tactical decision-making, there may be a much more economical way to achieve it first.
The best results normally come when the different training environments support each other. Ground instruction establishes the principles, synthetic training allows crews to practise and make mistakes, and live flying confirms that they can apply those lessons in the aircraft.
Train for the Aircraft You Actually Have
Tactical training also needs to recognise the capability of the customer’s fleet. A modern helicopter equipped with an integrated glass cockpit, moving map, EO/IR sensor, sophisticated defensive suite and secure communications allows crews to solve tactical problems differently from an older utility helicopter with relatively basic navigation and defensive equipment.
Neither situation prevents useful tactical training, but the techniques need to reflect reality. There is little benefit teaching crews procedures that depend on equipment they do not possess or building a syllabus around capabilities that exist only in the instructor’s previous aircraft.
Older or less sophisticated helicopters can still be employed extremely effectively when crews understand their limitations and train accordingly. In some environments, disciplined planning, good navigation, sensible use of terrain and strong crew cooperation matter considerably more than the sophistication of the cockpit.
This is particularly important when experienced instructors move between countries or aircraft types. Previous military experience is valuable, but it should inform the customer’s training rather than dictate it.
Operational Relevance Matters More Than Complexity
The customer’s actual missions should ultimately determine the emphasis of tactical training. A helicopter force responsible primarily for border patrol, troop movement, CASEVAC, humanitarian operations and support to internal security forces requires a different balance of skills from an attack helicopter force preparing for high-intensity conflict.
There may still be requirements for tactical navigation, formation, low-level operations, NVG, threat awareness and operations into difficult landing sites. The difference lies in how those skills are combined and the scenarios in which they are practised.
Training should also reflect the resources likely to be available on operations. There is little point making every training mission dependent on extensive intelligence support, dedicated ISR, sophisticated mission-planning systems and large command structures if crews will routinely deploy without them. They need to be able to operate effectively with the support that will actually exist.
This is particularly relevant for deployed operations in Africa and other remote environments, where crews may be operating considerable distances from their home base with limited infrastructure and support. Weather information may be limited, communications unreliable, landing sites poorly surveyed and engineering support some distance away. Those are not peripheral considerations; they are part of the tactical problem and should appear in training.
Develop Crews That Can Think
The ultimate purpose of tactical helicopter training is not to produce crews who can reproduce a series of taught manoeuvres. It is to develop crews who understand their aircraft, understand the mission and can make sensible decisions when the situation changes.
Procedures and standardisation remain essential, particularly in multi-aircraft operations, but tactics cannot be reduced to a checklist. The crew has to recognise when the original plan is no longer appropriate and have sufficient understanding to develop another one.
That capability takes time to develop. It comes from progressive exposure to realistic problems, good instruction and thorough debriefing. Instructors need to allow crews to make decisions and, where it is safe to do so, sometimes allow those decisions to develop far enough for the consequences to become apparent. Simply intervening every time a student starts moving away from the instructor’s preferred solution produces crews who become very good at waiting for instructors to make decisions for them.
For military helicopter training, the progression should therefore be deliberate. Establish sound aircraft handling, develop capacity, introduce the tactical skills, place them within relevant missions and progressively give the crew greater responsibility for solving the problem.
The end state is not a pilot who can fly tactically. It is a crew that can use the helicopter effectively to achieve the mission.
HDP