Chinook HC5/HC6s and air/ground crews from the RAF’s No 27 Squadron at RAF Odiham, Hampshire, recently deployed to Naval Air Facility (NAF) El Centro in California in August to conduct specialist desert flying training in Exercise Vortex Warrior.
The focal point of the exercise is to acclimatise crews to a type of heat that is unimaginable in the UK’s climate, while pushing the Chinook to the edge of its operating envelope. The California desert provides a vital and representative desert training environment for preparing aircrews, engineers and other support elements for operations in hot and dusty regions. It also allows them to undertake flying operations in mountainous regions, as well as gunnery and survival training.
The hot-and-high environment places the Chinook at the edge of its operating envelope and creates a more demanding working environment for aircrew, who often have to deal with a very degraded visual environment, thanks to ‘brown out’ conditions, as the rotors kick up dust and sand. It also creates more punishing conditions for the engineers, causing dust to be ingested into all parts of the aircraft, making every task more difficult and more exhausting.
This deployment to California comes after other elements of the RAF Chinook Force participated in Exercise Tomas En Polvo – which saw the tactical transport helicopters operating in the San Gregorio National Training Centre, Spain, in a multinational interoperability exercise with Spanish, Dutch and Italian forces – in July. Tomas En Polvo provided a unique opportunity to develop degraded visual environment operations and to ‘scope out’ the training area as a potential location for future Desert Environmental Qualification training.
