Aviation Tactics Instructor Course takes flight at Alabama’s Fort Novosel
A student and instructor pilot prepare for a training flight during the Aviation Tactics Instructor Course at Hanchey Army Heliport, Fort Novosel, Alabama. (U.S. Army photo by Kelly Morris)
Army Aviation instructor pilots (IP) and leaders have been talking for years about how to improve Fort Novosel’s Instructor Pilot Course.
The time for transformation has come, as years of preparation have come to fruition with the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence (AVCOE) presenting the new Aviation Tactics Instructor Course (ATIC) at Fort Novosel.
“I really applaud (Lt. Gen. David) Francis’ efforts four years ago to get this ball rolling. Change is hard, but it’s necessary. We want to build a great foundation, and we want the next cohort of leaders to take it to the next level,” said Col. Keith Hill, 110th Aviation Brigade commander.
The catalyst for creating the course is the shift away from Counterinsurgency Operations and toward Large Scale Combat Operations as the Army prepares for the battlefields of today and tomorrow – now, explained Chief Warrant Officer 5 Michael Corsaro, Aviation branch chief warrant officer.
Army Aviation is an integral part of the combined arms team and, to be successfully engaged in expeditionary operations on future battlefields, will need to fight its aircraft differently than it has in the past.
“That’s ATIC,” Corsaro said. “ATIC is a transformational course designed to take a tactical IP and equip them with all the tools they need in order to take their units to the next level.”
ATIC intends to develop platoon-level IPs who are better prepared to lead collective training at the platoon level and below.
This includes “tactics, because it’s tactically oriented, doctrinally sound on how we’re going to fight on the battlefield of the future, with all the skills they need to take an aviator and teach them how to fly and fight their aircraft,” Corsaro said.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 Michael A. Corsaro, Aviation branch chief warrant officer, speaks to students in the new Aviation Tactics Instructor Course at Knox Army Heliport, Fort Novosel, Alabama. (U.S. Army photo by Kelly Morris)
The course’s target population is aviators at the Chief Warrant Officer 2 rank who are at the 500-hour total flight time mark (junior pilot in command level). The class runs from 10-12 weeks. Graduates receive the IP identifier to be a standardization tracked officer.
Capt. Eric J. Wasek, commander of Company D, 1st Battalion, 14th Aviation Regiment, who leads a team of ATIC subject matter experts (SME), explained ATIC represents a “dynamic shift from a traffic pattern focus to a tactical focus with a primary purpose of increasing our lethality, survivability and readiness for future fights wherever they may transpire in the world.”
The course is designed to bridge an experience gap: During the Global War on Terror, Army Aviation’s experience base was conducting operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, but now, fewer aviators have that experience, explained Chief Warrant Officer 4 Stevenson W. Trumbull, AH-64 Apache helicopter ATIC subject matter expert.
“So what are they doing in lieu of that? Home station training, maybe a Europe rotation, and some units are still going to Iraq and Syria. But the units that are not, how are they building that tactical tool kit? How are they building the wherewithal – how do I fight my platoon, troop or company in a large-scale conflict, in multidomain operations? That’s what we are exposing them to here,” Trumbull said.
When these aviators return to their unit, Trumbull said, they will know who to talk to if they need to schedule close air support training, or how to operate in a strike coordination and reconnaissance environment, and they will be more familiar with attack and reconnaissance operations, and not just from aviation doctrine.
“They know how to get on the Army Training Network, look up the actual mission essential tasks and advise their commanders on how to train those mission essential tasks,” Trumbull said. “They are familiar with how to conduct an instrument evaluation, more familiar and I would argue ready to go with gunnery evaluator training, ready to go assist a unit’s master gunner in gunnery operations, grading tape and assisting with everything that goes with gunnery. We are showing them things that they never were exposed to in legacy IPC.”
Trumbull said senior leaders want the course to orient students on the Joint fight.
“That has been a major emphasis from Maj. Gen. Gill and Brig. Gen. Cole,” he said. “They have asked us, how are we exposing the students to the joint environment, and what are we teaching them about external enablers? If a unit is planning a mission, whether it’s assault, cargo, or attack, and they are requesting close air support, do they know how to do that? Before, the answer was no, but now in conjunction with our ATIC academics and what they are being taught on the flight line, they know how to do that.”
He explained there is greater emphasis on instrument training with this course, because of the instrument evaluator shortage in the combat aviation brigades.
Students also receive a full aviation operations order brief and plan and execute a platoon level mission, which has never been done before in legacy IPC.
They are launching multiship training flights in the course, with students on board.
“Multiship was a familiarization-only task in legacy IPC. In ATIC, once they are to this point in Stage 1, it is required that they launch, if able – we’re not going to hamstring training if aircraft break, or (based on) aircraft availability – but if the whole class gets issued aircraft, they’re going to launch as a team of four or two teams of two,” Trumbull said.
Trumbull added that they are mitigating risk by leveraging senior standardization pilots at Fort Novosel.
“They are by far the most experienced Apache pilots in the world,” he said.
The course, which provides Secret-level clearance instruction, is already generating important discussions at the platoon level, Wasek explained.
“What we’re already seeing is questions and inherent curiosity we have not seen before” from platoon-level instructor pilots, he said.
Those questions must be asked “as we prepare to transform in contact in accordance with the CSA’s initiative, which is making us a much more ready force, starting now,” Wasek said.
Hill explained the course redesign was guided by four main parameters – of being viable, relevant, adaptable and safe. The intent is to provide commanders with a better product, informed by lessons from the modern battlefield, shoring up areas identified by the Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization, such as mission planning, systems understanding and power management understanding.
“ATIC 1.0” is only the beginning,” Hill said.
“The goal is around ATIC 3.0, we have a concept that hopefully will materialize where our aircraft are planning together and flying together. Right now, due to resources, some infrastructure and a few other obstacles, we’re not there yet, but it’s coming,” he said.
Hill said the course will not make the students experts in everything but will show a few iterations of what right looks like.
“At least one, two, three times, so that when they’re asked as a mid-grade W2 to integrate into a joint planning cell, they’ve at least had some exposures or know where they can go look up the knowledge, know which regs, pubs, websites they can be pointed in the direction, so they can say, yeah, I remember getting that class back at ATIC,” Hill said.
Two Army Aviation students and their instructor preflight an AH-64 Apache helicopter during the Aviation Tactics Instructor Course at Fort Novosel, Alabama. (U.S. Army photo by Kelly Morris)
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sean A. White, UH-60 Black Hawk subject matter expert for ATIC, said the main difference between this course and legacy IPC is the focus on tactics.
“When you look at it on paper, the tasks and the hours, nothing’s really changed when it comes to that. It’s just how we’re implementing it and what we’re focused on, as far as using tactics and mission planning,” White said.
“Where the methodology for IPC is teach, talk, fly, that has not changed. We’ve just molded it to have a tactical focus more from the beginning all the way through the course,” he said.
With the first iteration for the UH-60 Black Hawk course now complete, White reflected on challenges, including scheduling and the weather. The lift platforms also require additional crew members for some of their tasks.
“One issue we’re working on, some of the tasks we are trying to accomplish require crew chiefs, and we currently don’t have those. Once we fix that problem and come up with a solution, that is going to significantly enhance some of the tasks that we can’t do right now. In the UH-60s, we can’t do sling loads without crew chiefs,” he said.
In the CH-47 Chinook community, flight engineers are also required.
“We’ve been working diligently at all levels to fix that,” White said. “We definitely have the right people at the right level coming up with different ways to attack that problem, and I am confident we will. It’s just trying to be patient enough to let that process play out to get where we want to be. I think it’s going to be a multifaceted solution short term, pushing for a more permanent long-term solution.”
He expects that, in the future, units will likely focus more on training before the ATIC candidates arrive at Fort Novosel, to help them be more prepared.
“It’s been a challenge, a good challenge, and I think we’re moving in the right direction. We need to fine-tune those hours and those iterations of those tasks until we get it right,” White said.
Students conduct a briefing before a training flight during the Aviation Center of Excellence’s Aviation Tactics Instructor Course at Fort Novosel, Alabama. (U.S. Army photo by Kelly Morris)
Leaders and subject matter experts lauded the team effort to stand up the course.
“ATIC has been the work of a phenomenal team. Subject matter experts across all rotary wing platforms in the Army, senior warrant officers, as well as over 26 organizations, have worked with us to make this product possible,” Wasek said.
Hill said the course was informed by the entire aviation enterprise.
“It’s five or six years of lessons learned from the training centers … and feedback from the Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization, who has been visiting units pre-COVID-19, post-COVID and seeing where is the force at, what are the force’s biggest needs, the Safety Center’s analysis from (aviation) accidents and sending small teams out to audit other joint exercises,” Hill said.
Surveys will be made, along with informal communications, to track graduates’ future progression and continue to improve the course.
