The only Army National Guard training site for fixed wing pilots is in the midst of a busy training cycle that officials expect to continue for at least the next two years. The increase in training needs is largely due to aging aviators who have retired and competition from commercial airlines and companies recruiting military pilots.
The Fixed Wing Army National
Guard Aviation Training Site – or FWAATS – executes the Army National Guard’s fixed wing flight qualification and training program using a small fleet of twin-engine turboprop aircraft: Fairchild C-26 Metroliners and Beechcraft C-12 Hurons, the military designation for the Beechcraft King Air 200.
“A lot of the C-26 Reserve and Army pilots had met their service obligations and retired in the last two years when the hiring was so good out in the airlines,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jack Brink, the FWAATS C-26 section lead and a C-26/C-12 standardization instructor pilot.
That created a gap within the Army’s aviation units, resulting in a shift in the type of training needed.
“We simply react to the needs of the active Army and the Army National Guard, and recently the pendulum has swung heavily from creating instructor pilots and examiners to needing to fill vacancies on their benches,” said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Daniel Latimer, a C-26 standardization instructor pilot. “So for now, the demand for fixed wing qualification courses has skyrocketed. We all know aviation runs in cycles, and all indications are that in a few years the pendulum will swing back the other way. By then, all the pilots we’re training up now will come back to us for more advanced courses, instructor pilot and instrument examiner courses.”
Brink and Latimer are two of only three full-time C-26 instructors at the FWAATS, which operates from the Northcentral West Virginia Regional Airport in Bridgeport, West Virginia. They expect to see twice as many C-26 students this year and next and there will be an increase among King Air trainees as well.
In a normal year, approximately 100 pilots and nonrated aircrew members are trained at the FWAATS across both platforms. The schoolhouse trained about half that number in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions and this year has started with a full schedule.
While it’s the only facility dedicated to fixed wing training for the Army National Guard, FWAATS also trains pilots from the active and reserve components of the United States Army. There are generally three types of students FWAATS sees: a regional pilot with enough fixed wing time but no Army aviation experience; a rotary pilot making the switch to fixed wing flying; and a pilot who qualified in Army fixed wing flying decades ago but got out for some reason.
“Maybe they got out of the military and got back in, or they flew helicopters for a while,” said Latimer, who has 19 years of federal service time, starting as a Marine and switching to become an Army aviator with the Mississippi National Guard and then joining the FWAATS in 2016. “They still meet the prerequisites to come here, and we’re just knocking off the cobwebs and reconnecting them with today’s Army aviation.”
Lt. Col. Wade A. Johnson, commander of the FWAATS, and Chief Warrant Officer 4 Bill Douglass, the program’s senior standardization instructor pilot, oversee a team of 23 personnel conducting fixed wing initial qualification and graduate-level qualification training, such as instrument examiner, maintenance test pilot and instructor pilot courses.
Origin of the FWAATS
In addition to training C-26 and C-12 aircrews, the FWAATS was also the Army’s only aircrew training facility for the Short C-23 Sherpa aircraft for several years. The Army divested the platform and the last FWAATS C-23 course was in 2013. From 2001 through 2020, the FWAATS has trained more than 2,600 pilots and non-rated aircrew members including more than 1,400 C-12 students, about 800 C-23 students and approaching 400 C-26 students.
But their efforts started a few years earlier. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Army National Guard set up four accredited regional aviation learning institutions of excellence, called Army Aviation Training Sites (AATS). The FWAATS, formed in 1996, is the only one of four that offers fixed wing training. It was created to provide the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker in Alabama with a professional and reliable training resource and surge capacity to meet the Army’s fixed wing training requirements here and abroad, in support of combatant commands engaged in decisive action operations.
The Army used King Air 90 aircraft designated U-21 as far back as 1964 and was the first branch of the military to use the King Air variant C-12 Huron, starting in 1974. The Army National Guard first started using C-26 in the 2000s when the U.S. Air Force ended its use of the C-26 and dispersed its inventory to several other branches. Along with the Army National Guard, the Air National Guard and the Navy still fly the C-26.
The FWAATS works in conjunction with the Operational Support Airlift Activity at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which manages the Army National Guard’s fixed wing share program of roughly 50 C-12 aircraft and 11 C-26 aircraft, moving the aviation assets to where they are needed most.
Until recently, two C-26 were deployed overseas and nine positioned stateside. All 11 are now stateside and distributed among the National Guard’s Fixed Wing Flight Detachments nationwide. However, it’s expected one or two C-26 units will cycle back overseas in the next couple of years.
The most common Army National Guard missions for both aircraft types are strategic level transport of personnel and cargo. Over the past year, both models also supported the Army National Guard’s work related to the pandemic. The Guard’s fixed-wing force alone has flown nearly 600 COVID-related missions, moving nearly 2,200 passengers and almost 20,000 pounds of cargo including ventilators and medical supplies.
FWAATS’ Current Fleet
The King Air and the Metroliner help the FWAATS meet its goal of delivering high-quality, low-cost training for Army aviators. While OSA-A frequently rotates the aircraft in the Army National Guard inventory amongst state units, the schoolhouse typically keeps their aircraft longer in order to coordinate training course schedules with scheduled maintenance. FWAATS contracts with Amentum/DynCorp International for King Air maintenance and M7 Aerospace for Metroliner work.
Throughout the year, the number of C-12 Huron aircraft on the FWAATS ramp ranges from three to five depending on the number of students enrolled. They employ a mix of models including the C-12U in standard cargo and key leader/strategic level transport configuration and the C-12R, which can be modified with EFIS glass co*ckpit instrumentation for reconnaissance missions. This prepares the student pilots to return to their units and start flying the C-12 variants currently assigned to that unit.
Fort Rucker also offers C-12 training, but the FWAATS is the only spot for C-26 Army training. The Army National Guard is the only entity in that branch currently flying the aircraft type. C-26 qualification students typically come to the West Virginia site two at a time, having started with two weeks in San Antonio on the only C-26 simulator in the U.S. and then spending three weeks in an aircraft at the FWAATS.
To support the increase in training needs, there are now two C-26 assigned to the schoolhouse. Both rolled off the production line in 1992 and upgraded to Collins Proline 21 avionics in 2007. Metroliner #513 arrived at FWAATS in 2020 after multiple years in Afghanistan. Metroliner #527 has been a trainer for the FWAATS for the past 22 years, where it has accumulated 10,000 hours.
“Nearly every former and current Army C-26 pilot has flown this aircraft at one point or another here at FWAATS,” Brink said.
While operating the C-26 was more of an opportunity that popped up than a proactive choice by the Army National Guard, the aircraft has earned its way into the heart of the pilots.
“The C-26 is versatile, it’s rugged and it has proven itself over time in a variety of missions,” Latimer said. “It can go from medical transportation to be set up for surveillance or for hauling passengers and cargo, or for a combination of all that. Versatility is the name of the game for the Army – and the military in general. A platform that allows us to dynamically adapt with whatever the demand is or the changing environment is ideal for the military. The C-26 is great for that, plus, it has some of the best avionics that the Army flies, so that enables our pilots to get into remote locations and inclement weather. It’s just a really good all-around plane.”
Training in the aircraft is appreciated, too.
“Anybody who has flown that aircraft knows and appreciates that the C-26 is unique in its handling
capabilities,” said Brink, who flew a combination of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft on active duty for 16 years and joined the West Virginia National Guard as a full-time fixed wing instructor in 2019. “You have to fly the aircraft in order for it to do what you want it to do. Even if the autopilot is doing what it’s doing, there’s a lot of hands-on flying. I love flying the C-26 because it forces you to have those stick and rudder skills that might be degraded flying something else.”
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