Every year, our White Force team delivers STORM WARRIOR, an intensive Royal Air Force training event for students on the Typhoon Qualified Weapons Instructor (QWI) course.
This year, working closely with the RAF and the Engineering Delivery Partnership (EDP), we coordinated one of the biggest STORM WARRIOR exercises yet, ensuring personnel are prepared and ready to succeed in the complex combat air environment.
STORM WARRIOR is a Large Force Exercise during which candidates are put through their paces across a series of realistic air combat scenarios. Inzpire's 29 Squadron QWI personnel are responsible for the entire exercise delivery - from concept design, through planning and execution, to debriefs and lessons implementation. Missions are meticulously crafted to meet Typhoon training objectives and incorporate the latest operational lessons from conflict arenas. It is the platform-level assessment event before candidates undergo their wider integration-level test in Ex COBRA WARRIOR.
This year's exercise enabled cutting-edge tactical development across nine live and two synthetic missions, over two phases, during July and August. Live sorties took place in dedicated airspace over the North Sea and northern England, while synthetic missions used the RAF’s Air Battlespace Training Centre at RAF Waddington. The scenarios focused on air and missile defence, offensive counter air and attack missions – all designed to test candidates across all their respective roles and capabilities.
A key aim of this year’s exercise was to develop the RAF's agile combat employment capabilities. Our subject matter experts (SMEs) coordinated the planning process, translating training objectives into realistic scenarios and overseeing mission materials up to the QWI level. During execution, they managed both live and synthetic delivery to challenge participants and reinforce the desired learning outcomes.
The scale of STORM WARRIOR 25 was truly impressive, involving over 30 aircraft at launch and surging to over 50 for the final mission sorties. In total, 347 individual sorties were flown, amounting to 35 hours of live mission time. Here’s what was involved…
RAF Typhoon and Lightning fighter aircraft
United States Air Force (USAF) F-35 and F15E aircraft
Air-to-air refuelling from the RAF and USAF
Intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft
RAF and USAF Air Transport aircraft
RAF Regiment’s Air-Land Integration cell
The Air Battlespace Training Centre
RAF Air Command & Control Force
John Collier Exercise Planning & Delivery Facility
P2000 boat from Royal Navy Coastal Forces
SMIT boat from Marine Services
We were proud to plan and deliver a cutting-edge combat air focused exercise with our RAF colleagues to enable the next generation of RAF QWIs to display their skills and knowledge. The 29 Sqn motto - Impiger et Acer meaning Energetic & Keen - provides the perfect description for all those who participated in and supported STORM WARRIOR 26.”
At the culminating debrief, Squadron Leader Mike Turrell, Officer Commanding of the Typhoon QWI Course, praised our team for their "hard work and quality" in designing an "excellent vehicle" packed with valuable training injects.
Inzpire’s involvement in Storm Warrior is enabled through the Engineering Delivery Partnership (EDP). Designed to ensure that the UK’s Armed Forces have access to the right skills, expertise and resources to achieve mission success, the EDP provides a network of suppliers who can be brought in quickly to deliver engineering services across defence.
Working through the EDP means we have good visibility of requirements as they emerge and the opportunity to offer our expertise to help solve some of defence’s challenges."
