Special Ops: The Evolution Part 3: Leading 427 Special Operations Aviation Squadron – Chris Bray

The course is truly world-class.

Uh, it takes many elements from our allies' training models, uh, but also adds so much more to account for many of the lessons learned that we had on real-world operations.

So by providing that training at an early stage in the career, it really sets a great foundation of things, you know, they will see in their career moving forward, like delivering those, uh, skill sets.

But also captures that training at the right time, because historically, before SoTAC, you may receive many elements of this training but throughout an extended period while you're on the flight line.

This allows us to provide that training upfront before they get too busy with their careers.

So kind of in the past where it was almost a mentorship process, this has been more condensed into formalized training.

Yeah, so it is, uh, formalized, professionalized training to kinda get them to that, uh, that endpoint.

It's a great course, and in fact, what I will mention is there's certain elements of the course that we have opened to the RCAF, uh, as well.

So specifically the, uh, SOA mission planning phase of that course, we have invited elements of the RCAF out to, uh, partake in that, because that makes us better as an organization so that when we do have RCAF elements supporting a CANSOFCOM mission, which is almost always now, that we have a certain baseline understanding of, you know, how do we plan and execute missions, because, you know, every fleet plans differently.

Uh, and this is a way just to bring convergence to that planning.

It allows kinda mutual understanding of the capabilities as well.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, we run this course once a year, and, uh, each year we invite a fairly large cadre of RCAF on this course to partake in the mission planning, uh, aspect of it.

I was thinking initially like, oh, you're, you're saying like other tac hell units or something, but from what you're saying, I'm guessing you're talking about like people from the J model fleet to plan like tactical air deliveries and how would that interact with your operations or higher level sustainment or a bunch of different supporting various platforms.

Yeah.

We, we not only invite, you know, the tactical aviation, uh, side of it, but also other fleets within the RCAF.

Increasingly, our, you know, exercises and operations require different platforms.

So, uh, like you said, having members from 436 bringing that C-130 aspect to our mission planning is extremely important.

So yeah, it's open to the entire RCAF, and, uh, each year we get more and more representation on it, which is, uh, excellent, so that when we do conduct force generation or, uh, operations together, we start with a common baseline understanding and language.

I would think too that the benefits are multiple in terms of you guys learn what can you realistically expect from these fleets.

You don't plan in a vacuum, and then it turns out like they don't arrive on a real operation and say, "Hey, we can't do that.

Like, that's not how we do this." And then they also learn how to plan around special operations type missions.

Yeah.

So it's, uh, mutually beneficial that our SoTAC students on the course start to get, you know, those CAPES briefs, but also understanding how do those fleets employ their capabilities-

Mm-hmm