Page 6 - AVALON 2023 - Day 3 | DAILY NEWS

HATS OFF TO BOEING FOR

HELICOPTER TRAINING

Boeing Defence Australia is responsible for
supporting the training of helicopter and © Gordon Arthur
UAV pilots of both the Royal Australian
Navy (RAN) and Australian Army. It does
so under the auspices of the Helicopter
Aircrew Training System (HATS).

Training takes place at the Joint Helicopter
School, which operates under 723 Squadron
at HMAS Albatross in Nowra, New South
Wales. The facility achieved an initial oper-
ating capability in early 2019.

Commander Sam Dale, Commanding
Officer of 723 Squadron, succinctly
described the Joint Helicopter School’s
function: ‘To develop helicopter aircrew for
combat.’ The squadron’s leader deliberately
alternates between army and navy officers,
given that both services utilise the school.

Dale explained: ‘723 Squadron, the Joint
Helicopter School, is responsible for train-
ing Defence’s helicopter aircrew, and we
do that in collaboration with Boeing and
other industry partners. It’s essential to our
outputs, working together with a common
objective, and really joined up and syn-
chronised with an integrated approach for
our helicopter training system.’

HATS has the potential to train up to 153 Manager, described it as ‘one of the most who had teamed up with Thales Australia,
pilots, aviation warfare officers, aircrew, sophisticated helicopter training schools was awarded this contract in October 2014.
mission sensor operators, remote pilot worldwide’. He said pass rates are very
warfare officers and instructors annually. strong, as the system is designed to maxi- Ship operations are practised too thanks
The first training course was delivered in mise pass rates. It trains UAV pilots as well. to the existence of MV Sycamore, a multi-
October 2018, and a total of 241 students role aviation training vessel based at HMAS
had graduated as at late 2022. Other industry partners are Airbus, Safran Waterhen in Sydney. The 94m-long Damen-
and Thales. Indeed, HATS employs 15 built vessel, which arrived in Australia in
Approximately 70-80 students attend the Airbus H135 T2+ twin-engine helicopters. June 2017, is an important training tool for
school at any one time, and a trainee heli- Classroom instruction is furthered by three HATS. This is because RAN warships are
copter pilot would typically spend nine Level B full-motion flight simulators from usually occupied with other tasks, so are
months at the school. After graduation, Thales; two tactical part task trainers from not available for training iterations.
pilots and aircrews are assigned to oper- Camber Technologies in the USA; one air-
ational squadrons where they learn to fly craft replica trainer from EDM in the UK; two Given that the RAN will receive twelve
specific helicopter platforms (MH-60R for VR trainers from Virtalis; one marshalling extra MH-60R helicopters and the army 29
the navy, and MRH90, Tiger or CH-47F for VR trainer from SEA; and ten desktop train- AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicop-
the army). ers from Camber. ters, demand for helicopter crews will only
grow in Australia.
Dale stated that the school boasts 193 Thales is responsible for the virtual reality
staff, of which 61% are from Boeing, 11% component of the course. Its 6.5 staff teach Thus, Amy List, Boeing Defence Australia’s
from Thales, 16% from the RAN, 7% from mission systems and tactical operations on Director of Sustainment Operations, com-
the army and 5% from elsewhere. Its 13 ITAR-free training tools, including ab initio mented: ‘We’ve got a really great challenge
pilot instructors have cumulatively achieved training for radar and sensor operators. ahead of us to make sure that we’re grow-
more than 60,000 flight hours. ing the capability to meet that future need,
HATS was acquired under Project Air 9000 and it’s our partnerships with army and navy
Ian Gibney, Boeing’s HATS Programme Phase 7, and Boeing Defence Australia, that are critical for us to be able to do that.’

6 | MARCH-02-2023 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/DAILY NEWS