Page 10 - RAF Lossiemouth Special Report

Visiting RAF Lossiemouth: The RAF Shapes a Way Ahead

Answer: As you can see out the window, the beautiful sunshine, the beaches and the warm welcome of the
Scottish people, there’s no other place I would rather be.

THE PERSPECTIVE FROM II (AC) SQUADRON: MEETING THE CHALLENGES

During a visit to RAF Lossiemouth in April 2016, there was a chance to talk with OC II(AC) Sqn, the commander
of one of world’s oldest and most famous squadrons.

He was the squadron commander who led the transition from RAF Marham to Lossie in 2014.

As the Wing Commander described the situation at Lossie:

“This was a Tornado squadron. Typhoons first arrived at Lossiemouth in 2014, with their arrival from Royal Air
Force Leuchars in Fife.

When that air base closed, number one and six squadrons moved up from Leuchars, and then in January
2015, we re-rolled from Tornado to Typhoon and moved to Lossiemouth from Marham in Norfolk.”

Lossie is becoming a key Typhoon hub from which the jet is deployed worldwide.

This is placing a significant stress on the hub to support several concurrent forward deployments, a subject
discussed with the Wing Commander as well as the Chief Logistics and Engineering Officer at the base in a
later interview as well.

Question: How would you describe your mission?

OC II(AC) Sqn: We are a Quick Reaction unit at RAF Lossiemouth .

When conducting Baltic air policing, the key is to learn the template or approach to air policing and to work
that with our NATO partners so we can seamlessly pass that mission back and forth to the NATO nations who
perform the mission on a rotating basis.

It is a NATO mission and the NATO procedures have to be followed, learned and refined in executing the
mission.

This is the third time that the Typhoon UK force has done the mission and is basically a quick reaction
mission but in a NATO context.

It’s a very focused, dedicated NATO mission.

It is a great learning experience for everyone in how NATO works and how NATO operates.

Quick reaction alerts are a zero to hero mission in a period of minutes.

You can be asleep, completely asleep, dressed up, ready to go; and the engineers will be asleep; and yet, a
number of minutes later, you are mandated to be airborne and facing a potential threat, facing a potential
escalating situation, and you just don’t know.

You need to have everyone trained, and everyone in the mindset that they have to be ready to go all the
time.

You need to do your job as professionally as you can when you get there.

Second Line of Defense

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