Pass masters

Rough terrain: A purpose-built off-road track containing hills, ditches and flat sections provides operationally-relevant training to drivers of vehicles including the Jackal 2

DST in numbers: 5.5 million The number of miles driver training vehicles from DST travel every year

16,000 The number of trainees who pass through the school annually

10,000 The number of driving licences granted to successful trainees each year

1,400 The approximate number of staff delivering the training

1,300 The size of DST’s training vehicle fleet

50 The amount, in acres, of tree plantations at the school. DST runs an active conservation group

18 The amount, in kilometres, of cross-country training circuits on site

16 The amount, in kilometres, of road training circuits at DST

Report: Stephen Tyler
Pictures: Graeme Main

FOR many British teenagers, turning 17 is one of the most eagerly-awaited milestones of their young lives.

Sixteen may mark the beginning of adulthood and reaching 18 brings with it a host of privileges, but it is the year in between that sees young people legally allowed to strap themselves into the driver’s seat of a car.

Before hitting the open road, however, would-be motorists have to negotiate the task of actually learning to drive.

For those on civvy street, lessons usually entail a comfortable few months of gear changes, hill starts and emergency stops before they are ready to showcase their talents with an examiner sat beside them.

But for the young men and women of the military, things progress at a much quicker pace. Service drivers master their art at the Defence School of Transport (DST) in Leconfield, near Hull, where many personnel progress from motoring novices to multi-licence-holders in just a
few months.

The tempo is rapid, but for DST licence acquisition squadron training manager Gavin Dalton, producing skilled and confident drivers is a necessity for an operationally-busy Armed Forces.

“A lot of kids come here at 17 having never driven before and in three months they have all their licences,” the former Royal Air Force officer explained. “Not long after that they could be behind the wheel in Afghanistan.

“It’s a bit of a sausage factory when you consider the amount of licences we deliver, but it works really well.”

Mr Dalton’s description of DST’s Driver Training Wing (DTW) – the world’s largest driving school and the department responsible for delivering basic lessons and tests – as a “sausage factory” is backed up by the numbers involved.

Using civilian instructors and taking exactly the same tests as those outside the military, DST helps its students qualify for more than 10,000 licences every year.

At any one time, 200 learners can be out and about on the roads around DST’s Normandy Barracks in one of the school’s 1,300-strong vehicle fleet as they attempt to gain licences for everything from cars to minibuses and lorries.

military-specific skills including how to conceal and camouflage their vehicles and even how to drive in a convoy using a network of computers and a piece of software controlled using steering wheels and pedals.

And while successfully passing a driving test spells the end of the learning road for the majority of British drivers, for Servicemen and women it is just the start.

Graduates from the DTW develop an operational focus for their new-found skills at the Advanced Training Wing (ATW), whose job it is to ensure that military drivers are able to safely and effectively steer their vehicles in the unique environments found in an operational theatre.

Expert instructors from all three Services provide tuition on a fleet of operationally-active vehicles ranging from quad bikes and Springer buggies to Mastiff armoured personnel carriers.

Constant developments and refinements in the shape of urgent operational requirements (UORs) mean that the training has to be frequently refreshed, but Vehicle Division training officer Capt Paul Eaton (RLC) said his team was more than up to the task.

“This is an immense job and what we have to do constantly evolves, but we are very proficient at it,” he said. “A UOR can come out on the Sunday and we’ll be training with it on the Monday – it’s very much flash to bang.

“We have more than 40 instructors dealing with that side of life and we also handle the steady state stuff such as advanced driving instruction and driving instructor training.

“The need to improve standards has evolved massively and it is a big challenge. We all work hard but then everyone here knows how important the end result is.”

Although the instruction at the ATW contains a mixture of theory and practical sessions, as much as 80 per cent of each course is spent on the road to make the training as hands-
on as possible.

And while nothing can replace the experience of driving in theatre, Leconfield’s 800-acre training area is certainly the next best thing.

\Purpose-built obstacles, including tight, claustrophobic alleyways, stretches filled with soft sand, rough tracks and water obstacles have been installed to replicate some of the conditions found in southern Afghanistan.

The Herrick flavour also extends to the instructors themselves. Each of the teachers are expert drivers with recent operational experience which is passed directly onto trainees as well as those learning to be instructors themselves.

And far from resting on its laurels, Capt Eaton told Soldier that staff from the ATW frequently deploy to theatre to gauge how effective their training is and see how it can be developed.

Taking on potholes, pedestrians and other road users makes learning to drive a tough task for most of society. Getting behind the wheel of a multi-million pound vehicle knowing that you can add enemy fire, IEDs and an ever-changing landscape to that list is a much more daunting proposition.

But while the challenge is great, so too is the training provided at the Defence School
of Transport.

Whether they are riding a quad bike in a forward operating base or steering a Mastiff through enemy territory, Service drivers head out on operations having passed the world’s toughest driving test.