CDR’s UK Correspondent, Joe Campion, recently visited the Royal Canadian Air Force detachment, ‘Air Task Force Cobra Warrior’ in the UK for Exercise Cobra Warrior 24-2. Canada sent not only CF-188A Hornets, but also a CC-130HT tanker detachment to support the exercise in the air-to-air refueling discipline, here is our training report.
Ex Cobra warrior (CW) is an exercise hosted by the Royal Air Force (RAF) biannually… usually. However, this year CW has only occurred once due to the earlier March iteration being cancelled for unconfirmed reasons. (The prevailing opinion as to the reason for the cancelation is the conflict in the Middle East.)
Six months later, Ex CW 24-2 took place between September 16 to October 4, with many NATO nations and their aircraft hitting UK soil. The exercise targets training aircrew and staff within other domains in extremely intense, tactical and large force exercises. Basically, attempting to train forces to be capable of planning and executing air operations against the highest standard of adversary. Cobra Warrior is an exercise developed and managed by the RAF’s Space and Warfare Centre and 92 Tactics and Training Squadron, both stationed at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire.
RCAF IN LINCOLNSHIRE
RAF Waddington was the chosen location for the RCAF to station ‘Air Task Force Cobra Warrior’ for the exercise. The RCAF flew over eight CF-188A Hornets from 409th Tactical Fighter Squadron, which are based at Cold Lake, Alberta, and a single CC-130HT from 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron usually based at CFB Winnipeg, Manitoba. Supporting these aircraft were roughly 180 personnel from various roles, approximately 20 of these were pilots.
Air task Force Cobra Warrior began arriving in the UK as early as August 29, when a CC-177 touched down at RAF Waddington, full of support equipment and staff. On September 4, a second CC-177, a single CC-130J and Air Canada Cargo Boeing 767 landed at Waddington. The following day four of the CF-188s arrived. On September 10, the other four CF-188s arrived along with a CC-330 husky full of Canadian personnel. The final asset to arrive in the UK was the CC-130HT on September 9.
PARTNER NATIONS
The Canadian detachment shared RAF Waddington with six F/A-18Cs from HavLLv 11 of the Finnish Air Force with roughly 100 personnel, Six F-16Cs of 3 Eskadra Lotnictwa Taktycznego of Poland with around 90 personnel. Other UK airbases were also the operating locations for exercise participants. Norway located eight of its F-35As further down south in the UK at United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) base, RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, the home base of USAFE F-35A Lightning IIs. USAFE also sent eight of its F-16Cs of 555th Fighter Squadron (FS) from Italian base, Aviano AB to RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk to participate in the exercise.
With no surprise, home based participation came from all fast jet bases in the UK, Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4s operated from both RAF Coningsby, just down the road from Waddington and also RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. 5th gen RAF participation came from the F-35Bs at RAF Marham. USAFE operated its UK based F-35As from 493 and 495th FS from RAF Lakenheath. Additional participation came from Draken Europe, a civil contractor operating the Dassault Falcon 20s and L-59 Honey Badgers.
Engines roared for take off twice a day during the three weeks of CW. The main CW mission would mainly take place in the morning and the afternoon would be used for other training tasking’s such as low level flying through the various Low-Fly areas of the UK, including the world-famous Mach loop in Northern Wales, an attraction foreign pilots are always keen to experience. Another tasking in the afternoon would potentially be Basic Fighter Maneuvering (BFM) of various set ups with partner nations working and also fighting against each other.
Canadian Hornets, as well as the other nations practiced the full range of air operations during the CW missions. These ranged from defensive and offensive counter air and strike operations with hours of planning and consultation taking place prior to them being executed in the skies above the UK. The planning of these training missions is where the learning from others can really be seen during huge multinational exercises.
Interoperability, like many multinational exercises, is almost always the key take-away for visiting aircrew and support staff. Working with nations that Canada doesn’t generally get to work with on a regular basis, due to the obvious geographical location difference, provides RCAF aircrew and the other nations with learning opportunities unavailable at home base. This via feeding off each other’s procedures not only in the execution stage but also the planning and post stages of being in the battlefield. As a whole, working with and witnessing a variety of different cogs of the NATO machine working in one combined location is a huge bonus for the RCAF when it comes to fighting real conflicts as part of team NATO.
409 SQUADRON
During CW, CDR had the opportunity to speak with Lt Col Ben Switzer, CW 24-2 ATF Commander, and asked him for the rationale of sending CF-18s to the UK for CW. “Ensuring the readiness of the Royal Canadian Air Force to counter air threats is one of our most important responsibilities,” he told CDR. “Exercises like CW provide highly valuable training for our members, our allies, and our partners in practicing working together in a wide variety of tactical combat scenarios. The purpose of CW was for us to develop interoperability with allies and partners by exercising composite air operations in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment. CW also allowed us to train and fight alongside other NATO allies that we don’t typically fly with day-to-day, sharpening our skills as a combined force.”
Lt Col Switzer continued, “We achieved many training objectives; we brought a mix of pilots with different experience levels. Some are four-ship leads, two-ship leads, and combat-ready wingmen, this was in order to spread out the experience gained from CW across all the different levels of pilots we currently have.”
CC-130HT APPEARANCE
Playing the force enabler role for Canada was the CC-130HT, the aircraft would depart roughly 30 minutes prior to the fighter element during a CW mission. Other Force Enablers were RAF Voyagers K2/K3s and USAFE KC-135R/TS. All these tankers would be flying in one of the Air to Air Refueling areas available off the coast of the UK awaiting the fighters to receive their much needed fuel in-between scenarios.
435 Squadron’s time in the UK started of not quite as expected with the aircraft suffering a bird strike on approach to RAF Waddington just days before CW begun. The aircraft was out for six days of the exercise due to the Buzzard, a UK bird of prey, leaving a very visible hole in the aircraft’s left wing’s leading edge which needed to be replaced. The new part arrived from Canada on September 24, was fixed on the night shift and the Hercules was airborne the next day.
CDR also had the opportunity to speak to Major Devin Rand, the detachment commander of 435 Squadron attending CW with a CC-130HT. 435 had roughly 25 people supporting the CC-1130HT det, two of them being aircraft commanders. Rand explained that the rationale of attending CW was “we’re here strictly for air-to-air refueling, what we’re gaining as a squadron besides just currencies and qualifications is we are training some new people. Beside that obviously we get to not only hone our skills with our own fighter jets, but we’re now also tanking other countries, so there’s an interoperability that you gain from being able to practice with other countries and I think that’s invaluable because you learn things about each other that maybe you didn’t know and then you’re able to work together in operations as well, so it’s pretty valuable to be able to be here with other countries at the same time.”
The H model, the HT specifically, it really is suited for small exercise environments in comparison to other air to air refuellers. Rand concurred with “You can operate it in a small block of airspace, basically stay out of the way of the main event, but you can still deliver an offload that’s usable by all the fighters involved. So it is really versatile in that role in the fact that you can put it into a small box of airspace, it can still offload a good amount of fuel, especially via the fuselage tank capable of carrying 24,000 pounds of jet fuel, so everyone’s happy.” He added “unlike large wingspan tankers we can also park it in any kind of ramp space, we can operate it on different sizes of runways, so it’s pretty versatile in that respect that you can get a good offload, you can sneak it into a tactical airspace and then you can kind of park it wherever you want.”
The RCAF received all five of the CC-130H fleet in 1992, they came directly from the Lockheed factory but were configured for the AAR mission they provide by Canadian company, Northwest Industries Ltd in Edmonton, Alta, before arriving into RCAF service as CC-130HTs. When asking the Major on the latest upgrades to the RCAF CC-130HTs, he told CDR “I think probably the last one was, like, the electronic displays, they basically got rid of all the steam power gauges in the cockpit, and they are all glass instrument displays now. Other than that, there has been some radar upgrades and stuff like that too.”
CDR had the pleasure of joining 435 Sqn aboard the CC-130HT, callsign ‘Oilr25’ and its crew to witness them providing AAR to Finnish F/A-18Cs during a CW 24-2 mission. The weather and visibility was extremely poor, that poor that the RCAF CF-188s cancelled the mission due to weather. However, the Finns braved the poor visibility and met the CC-130HT in ARA-8 for some fuel.
On the topic of providing other nations jets with AAR, CDR asked Rand if they had or were planning on refueling the F-35B of the RAF, he replied “we have a whole matrix that we can basically refuel kind of any probe and drogue jets, it’s just up to each country whether they are also able to fuel with us, so it’s kind of a talk between the two countries, but yeah, we can refuel any of them basically.”
EXTRA WEEK IN THE UK
Despite CW 24-2 ops concluding on October 4, the RCAF stayed in town. All eight of the CF-188s remained an extra week to conduct force generation training after CW. The CC-130HT also stayed a few extra days. The RCAF’s participation in CW is part of Canada’s Operation Reassurance, the Canadian Armed Forces contribution to NATO deterrence and defense measures in Central and Eastern Europe. So this extra week stay demonstrated the RCAF’s commitment to European training and interoperability opportunities with its allies. A RCAF Spokesperson told CDR “We wanted to make the most of our time in the UK. The European airspace is dynamic and challenging with different regulations than what we are used to in Canada. They continued “Our extended stay following the end of CW allowed us to further enhance our operational readiness and interoperability with our partners whilst also strengthening our capabilities to operate in European airspace.”
With the CF-18s and CC-130HT combined, the Air Task Force which attended CW 24-2 in the UK accumulated a total time of 350 flight hours. As mentioned, it is rare for the RCAF to train with a combination of NATO allies in one dedicated location. This is why exercises like CW exist. On top of that key benefit, the ATF receive training of the highest standard in scenarios and against the latest threat systems that will equip ground and aircrew with skills that are extremely valuable in real-life conflict.
A variation of platforms flown by the participants made it a great exercise for 4th and 5th generation integration training for the nations. All of the involved nations are either current or future F-35 operators so gaining experience of working together now and building rapports will help all of them including Canada prepare to operate the new F-35 fighter and operate it to the highest standards by learning from those operating it now in such exercises.
Joe Campion is CDR’s UK Correspondent
