Inzpire - Not Just an Aerospace Company
08 Jul 20
Collective Training and Services OBU
Both Inzpire and our Collective Training and Services Operational Business Unit are truly joint teams made up of experts from all three Services. Since its inception, our Collective Services Division has delivered well over 300 air-land integration training exercises to the British Army.
I’ve been with Inzpire for four years now; I decided to join the company as some of the things that I loved doing whilst serving in the Army were managing, designing and delivering training so I jumped at the chance to work for a company that excels in training delivery. In my early years, whilst serving, synthetic training was not really utilised and most of the training was delivered either via PowerPoint in the classroom or through using the actual equipment in live exercises. It wasn’t until I graduated from the gunnery careers course and became a qualified gunnery instructor that I realised how powerful and cost-effective synthetic training could be.
One of the first things I did when taking up post as an instructor within the Army was to introduce synthetic training to the courses I delivered. This saved a huge amount of money as we didn't have to use as much ammunition to deliver the same training output that simulation could provide. This cost-saving approach was particularly applicable to the complexity of delivering battle group, brigade and divisional level collective training which can be both challenging and expensive to deliver.
With an expertly crafted blend of synthetic and live training the impact on capability is huge. 15 years on from my experiences of introducing synthetic training to Army training courses, the technology we use today is impressive and powerful. Indeed, I personally believe that we are only on the cusp of realising a paradigm change in the effectiveness of synthetic training solutions. Nevertheless, it should never be overlooked that the tech is there to support human actions. Although the advances in augmented and virtual reality are alluring, the design, delivery and assessment of training still requires experienced human input. To quote my boss: “whether you buy a Fiat 500 or a Ferrari, if you can’t drive it, you only have a useless piece of equipment – the car plus an experienced and competent driver equals capability”. Inzpire are the expert drivers and our expertise turns brilliant equipment into unrivalled capability.
Shortly after joining Inzpire, I was asked to provide a demonstrator exercise to allow land-based personnel to practice procedural drills as part of their training progression. With only three months between saying yes to the opportunity and trainees walking through the door, I initially focused entirely on understanding the training objectives and how they could be fully realised in a synthetic exercise. This insight proved to be invaluable and enabled me to develop something that was user-centric, complex and demanding whilst fully extracting every ounce of technical capability from the equipment in the Air Battlespace Training Centre (ABTC), based at RAF Waddington.
A training audience participating in an Inzpire-led exercise at the RAF's ABTC
From there, designing the exercise really involved understanding the customer’s training aims and objectives. Sat with a wet towel on my head I was trying to be creative whilst developing vignettes that would challenge the training audience in their processes and procedures and provide a blended stepping stone into their live training exercise delivered via a coalition exercise. For the actual exercise, delivery was split into a rehearsal week for the training management team and an execute period dedicated to achieving the agreed training objectives. Inzpire provided the majority of the subject matter experts who have the expertise and knowledge to fill all required training roles, however this exercise required an additional 40+ military role-players which presented a not-inconsiderable training, management and coordination task even before the 80+ trainees arrived. It was very gratifying to get senior leadership feedback that our willingness to go the extra mile to achieve the task was deeply appreciated and refreshing.
The execute itself saw a mix of UK and American personnel training together with various visits from our NATO partners. With over 120 personnel and up to 10 different specialisations within the training audience flexibility, coordination and strong leadership were key requirements to ensuring this exercise met all of the desired outcomes. A hugely in-depth after-action review focusing on root-cause analysis was built and delivered after each execute. When the senior trainee is a Brigadier, it certainly focuses one’s analytical skills!
I believe that the most powerful part of what Inzpire does in the ABTC is to build and deliver an incredibly focused debrief. Without this function there is a risk that trainees gain experience but do not turn that into enduring knowledge and battle-winning capability.
Inzpire's team build and deliver detailed briefs and debriefs to ensure all learning objectives are met duering exercises
Although hugely challenging and occasionally a little stressful, it was an absolute pleasure to run this new and unique exercise, as it is with every exercise we deliver. Knowing that our training will be instrumental to the way our forces will fight - and keep safe - in future operations and receiving positive feedback from the customer is why we do what we do. Our customers fed back that this exercise - now named IRON DRAGON - ultimately exceeded their expectations, and testament to that feedback is the fact that the training prepared them well for their capstone exercise Ex Warfighter in the US.
This blog is written by Daz Fox. Daz completed a 28-year career in the Army, during which time he accumulated a vast amount of ISTAR expertise. He has specialised in Unmanned Air Systems, Weapon Locating Radar, Base ISTAR, Sense and Warn, Acoustic Systems, Targeting and MLRS, whilst his Unmanned Air Systems experience includes delivering H450, Watchkeeper and Mini-UAS training. Daz's instructional pedigree is underpinned by the Qualified Gunnery Instructor qualification.
The images in this blog have been captured from a number of differerent Inzpire-led training exercises at the ABTC and are not necessarily indicative of Ex. IRON DRAGON.
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