Afghan pilots trained in UK

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and QinetiQ have revealed the existence of a programme to train Afghan helicopter pilots in the UK. The programme, named Project Curium, has trained 27 Afghans to fly Mil Mi-17 transport helicopters, a model used in Afghanistan for missions including medical evacuation. Two Mi-17s were purchased from the Bulgarian Air Force for the pupils to train in and QinetiQ’s role was to modify the aircraft and bring them up to UK MOD standards.
Jeff Gardner, technical manager of Project Curium, said of the challenges facing the team: “This was unique project to be involved in. We were working to very strict timescales.” He continued: “You have to be pragmatic when faced with these kinds of challenges, but we were able to use a database of experience; we approached countries who used or had used the aircraft, like Finland and Ukraine, to solve the challenges.” Gardner also stated that when the aircraft arrived in the UK, there were around 900 issues with the helicopters that had to be resolved before they could be used for training. For example, he said, writing on the cockpit instruments had to be anglicised from Cyrillic prior to use.
The students, who are officers in the Afghan National Security Force, all took English classes before beginning their flight training. Once their training is completed, the aircraft will be given to the Afghan government and will be transported to Afghanistan to join the current fleet of Mi-17s serving with Afghan national authorities.