Let’s say you’re a mid-sized nation and you buy a foreign country’s fighter jet.
I’m assuming it comes with instruction manuals in your native tongue, parts, and instruction manuals for maintaining it. But do fighter pilots learn to fly specific planes out of books? Do they learn in flight simulators? Are people sent along with the jets to help train?
Yes, I know anyone who is going to fly a high-performance plane knows how to fly in a general sense, much like how nobody first learns to drive in an F-1 race car. However… an F-1 race car isn’t exactly a family sedan, now, is it?
AIUI, what happens is this: A nation will buy fighter jets from - say, America - and then send its pilots over to America for training for 1-2 years, or have American trainers come over to its own nation and teach its pilots at home.
Taiwan used the former approach when buying F-16s from America - it sent pilots over to America, but when Switzerland bought American F-18s, it had American trainers come over to Switzerland to teach Swiss pilots…(I think, if my memory isn’t off.)
Answer is that it depends. The most common method is to have a few experienced pilots go over to the Country of manufacture & train. These guys later become the instructors for their own service. Remember, pilots are only a small part of the personnel, ground crews also need to be gained, as do the people in the depots and possibly those in the buyers overhaul fascilities.
It’s not just planes, either - back in the mid-90’s, an artilleryman friend of mind received an offer to travel to the United States to train on a new system (The MLRS, I think).
When a country contracts to buy new aircraft the contract can include pretty much anything in the way of training. As already mentioned training can be in either country. But additionally the buying country will probably need all the infrastructure that goes along with the aircraft.
The company I used to work for had departments to handle all the requirements. They include designing new bases, all the support equipment, electrical requirements, runway and taxiway specifications, technical manuals, spare parts kits. The list goes on and on.
Velocity and GaryM pretty much hit it; As a one-time US Government worker in Foreign Military Sales, the US Government will offer training at US Army/Navy/AF schools alongside US pilots (Foreign pilots must have a command of English) and US Military teams can be deployed to continue training in-county.
Depends on the Country’s infrastructure and level of abilities; European nations often go it alone after a time, other countries may have support for many years. But yeah, offering a major program without offering training just doesn’t happen.
Back when I lived in Tucson in the 90s foreign pilots would train on F16s at a facility that shares the runway with Tucson International Airport (I think the facility was also used by the Air National Guard for the same purpose). There were a bunch of flag poles along the road in front of the facility which flew the flags of whichever countries were currently training there.
Almost all modern weapons systems require training, and they often require close continual contact with the manufacturer or the military of the country manufacturing the hardware in order to keep up with updates, upgrades, service bulletins, recurrent training, etc.
This is often seen as a feature. For example, Egypt’s military contains a lot of people who have worked closely with Americans and other western military people for years, and it is said that this has had a moderating effect on the military, making it more pro-western and with more modern ideals.
Yes, you can either buy your own simulator as part of the package, or send your pilots for simulator time somewhere else.
Also, those big weapons deals may include some local manufacturing and design as part of the deal. What kind of local manufacturing and design? Well, for one example, they may let you work on the simulator…
Michael Dorn, the guy who’s played Worf in any number of Star Trek properties, actually owns an F-86 Sabre, which he flies, and bought from the Republic of South Africa’s Air Force. A F-86 is old by air force standards but it is a ludicrously high performance plane for a private pilot - so how’d he get trained on that? Dorn has also owned a T-33 Shooting Star and has flown F-16s. So, did the SA air force sell him training for his Sabre, too?
There will be other (rich) people out there who fly F-86s and who will advise. Companies who service & rebuild/repair these types of rich men’s toys will probably sell training/conversion to type as well. It all makes money. Same for Spitfires and P-51s.
My god friend owned a P51. He learned to fly it just like the military pilots did in the 1940’s. He owned a PT17 Stearman (basic biplane trainer) and a North American T6 (Advanced trainer). He got experience flying those and transitioned to the P51, same as the pilots of WWII did. He is truly a steely eyed missle man.
I went to an air show recently and they had Danish F-35 pilots and maintenance personnel there there who I spoke too and they told me the US Air Force has brought them over in year long rotations to train on and operate the jets, and upon receiving the jets will travel with them back to Denmark and train the pilots and crew over there. The fact they will only receive the F-35 in 2022 means there will be already several years of experienced airmen by the time they’re set to operate independently.