Overview
At the end of the first or second tour of duty, the best front line fast jet aircrew are selected for a place on the course. They qualify in both ground school and flying phases of the course in order to return to the frontline to instruct weapons and tactics on operational Squadrons.
The QWI course lasts five months. It begins with an initial two weeks combined ground school where pilots and navigators learn about the weaponry of various aircraft. This is followed by five months of training back at their respective squadrons in the use of the weaponry specific to their own aircraft. The course culminates in the operational phase, the Combined QWI (CQWI), where everything learnt over the past five months is put into practice. Each morning the QWI students are given an Air Tasking Order (ATO). They then need to plan the appropriate missions required to fulfil the objectives laid out by the ATO. The Hercules and C-17 are included in the course to give the students an opportunity to integrate a slow mover into their mission plans.
There are QWI courses for Harrier, Tornado GR4, Hawk and Typhoon as of 2010.
In Feb 2010 the RAF introduced an additional new QWI course for aircrew of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance platforms (such as Reaper, Nimrod, Sentry and Sentinel) as well as Air Battle Managers and Intelligence Officers. This course, the QWI (ISR) Cse has the equivalent status of the QWI annotation and equates to the Intel Weapons Course run by the USAF Weapons School. This course is run by 54(R) Sqn RAF and also lasts 5 months.
Pilots of other airforces can attend the school through the Ministry of Defence's International Defence Training Programme.
All graduates are awarded 'QWI' annotation in the Air Force List.
Read more about this topic: Qualified Weapons Instructor