Florennes farewells the TLP

Words and photography Michael van der Mee

On May 19 the Belgian Defence - Air Component hosted a media day at Florennes Air Base to give the media the opportunity to witness the last TLP course to be hosted at the base before the complete TLP organization moves to Albacete in Spain in July of this year.

In the past twenty years military operations have changed based on technological development, the political situation and threat presentation. In the past most military air operations were conducted in the lower levels of air space, based on the necessity to acquire the target visually or with short range sensors. This low flying activity put a lot of noise burden on the population in Central Europe, which for TLP, was counteracted by the sharing principle of airspace amongst the TLP Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) nations, but still excluded the possibility to train operations at night.

Today’s military air operations, enabled by standoff weapons/sensors and performance of modern combat aircraft focus more on medium and high altitude scenarios. But this altitude band is also used by civil airline traffic. Civil air traffic forecasts show a dramatic increase of civil airline operation in these altitude bands restricting future military air exercises and TLP training.

This tendency has increasingly influenced TLP over the last few years. In 2006 the MOU Nations decided to accept the Spanish offer to re-locate TLP to Los Llanos Air Base, Albacete, Spain. The Spanish airspace around the base offer a large, yet unrestricted volume of military training areas, which will allow military air operations training in all height bands and improved the possibility for operations at night.

The TLP organization plans to move to Spain in July and to start its operation at Los Llanos  Air Base as from summer 2009.The concept of Tactical Leadership Programme remains as before. However two nations will enter the MOU and become TLP member nations; France and Greece. With 10 nations onboard and under the leadership of the new Spanish Commandant Colonel J.M. SALOM, TLP will continue its academic program in mid October before the first flying course starts in November 2009 , using the new designated airspace for the first time. In 2010 TLP is planning to conduct a full set of 6 Flying Courses of which 3-4 will also a include a week of night operations.

The TLP Organization and Mission

The Tactical Leadership Programme is a unique, stand alone organization based on a MOU between the Air Forces of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. These Air Forces finance, man and provide support to TLP. Based on their contributions towards TLP these Nations are entitled to send a number of students and participants to the respective course and have the right to influence TLP activities. Other Nations such as Greece, France, Portugal, Turkey, Poland and the Czech Republic may be invited as guests to TLP courses.

Based on a burden sharing principle the MOU Nations will provide airspace, infrastructure and support assets to the respective TLP courses. Approximately 50 officers, most of them experienced flight and weapon instructors, are supported by about 100 civilians and Belgian military who form the staff of TLP. This staff is lead by a Commandant of the host nation, currently Colonel J. Steyaert, and organized in various branches to cover all aspects of TLPs tasks. Each branch is lead by a Branch Chief, whose post may rotate amongst the leading MOU nations. Each MOU nations is represented by a Senior National Representative. Other nations may be allowed to support the TLP staff with Liaison Officers.

The Mission of the TLP is to increase the effectiveness of Allied Air Forces through development of leadership skills, mission planning, briefing, tactical air operations and debriefing skills and conceptual and doctrinal initiatives. To achieve this complex task TLP undertakes flying courses, academic courses, conferences and external excursions.

The flying courses are the core business of TLP. Each year up to 6 courses take place. Each course last 4 weeks and includes 15 different missions in which a mission commander will be selected out of the participating aircrews, he or she is challenged to coordinate the different capabilities of the various aircraft to achieve the best result for the given task. These tasks/missions can range from air defence of NATO territory to time critical counter measures against insurgence and to combat search and rescue of downed aircrews. In each course up to 24 different fast jet combat aircraft form an expeditionary wing which will be supported by helicopters, cargo aircraft , tankers and ground troops and are opposed by various ground based seaborne and airborne assets that simulate hostile threats.

The author would like to thank Adjudant Jean-Marc Tamigniaux for his outstanding preparations of the day and providing all needed information for this article.