EDA Takes Helicopter Pooling to the Next Level

The European Defence Agency (EDA) Helicopter Training Programme (HTP) will organise military rotary wing exercises over a ten year period, following the signing of a programme arrangement on 19 November.

The HTP agreement was signed at the latest meeting of the (EDA) steering board, with the aim of the pooling and sharing programme to address the shortfall in deployable helicopters within Europe by improving training effectiveness.

The new arrangement will provide the current EDA helicopter projects manager, Wg Cdr Andy Gray, and his future successors with sufficient time and funding to further expand the programme.

Initially limited to delivering live exercises aimed at disseminating tactical skills, the EDA’s helicopter projects now also include a Helicopter Tactics Symposium, an Operational English Language Course at the UK Defence Language School, and a Helicopter Tactics Course.

In addition to the three week tactics course, ten of which are conducted annually, a Helicopter Tactics Instructors Course (HTIC) is being developed. This course will ‘train the trainers’ in order for them to deliver tactics training within their own organisations. The first trial instructors’ course will be held in March 2013 in Sweden.

It is Gray’s long term aim to see the course evolve into an event which will attract participants from the various European Union member states on a recurring basis, much like the Fast Air Tactical Leadership Programme (TLP) at Albacete in Spain.

In September 2013 a simulator-based training capability concept demonstrator project will be conducted, which will involve a distributed network of simulators in the UK, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

At the same time, the EDA is working on a number of NH90 projects to increase effectiveness of the European NH90 fleet, a harmonisation of military helicopter flying training and a study into a possible Multinational Helicopter Wing.

In 2009 the EDA initiated a series of helicopter exercises which are meant to increase deployability by developing, consolidating and sharing best practices of flying helicopters in the contemporary operational environment. Since then, exercises have been conducted in France (GAP 2009), Spain (AZOR 2010), Italy (Italian Call 2011), Portugal (Hot Blade 2012) and the recent Exercise Green Blade in Belgium.