Forces Driving School passes the test

With approximately 60,000 wheeled vehicles in the British Armed Forces, of many different types, training personnel to drive them is a huge task. And with many recruits joining the Services without even a basic driving licence, that task becomes even bigger.

Thankfully the Defence School of Transport (DST) is the largest driver training school in Europe, possibly the World. Based near Hull in East Yorkshire, it is a purpose-built facility of 760 acres (308 hectares) which includes 16 kilometres of criss-crossing road training circuits - with roundabouts, junctions and even a purpose built hill - as well as 18 kilometres of cross country circuits with combat woods and water crossings thrown in.

At time the site looks like a surreal Lego-land model of a motorway with incongruous vehicles of all types driving this way and that, up, down and around.

And it's no wonder it looks like this. The statistics are staggering. The school has 1,200 different vehicles, ranging from saloon cars and motorcycles to military heavy goods trucks and upto the latest armoured troop vehicles, including the mighty Mastiff. 

There are a thousand staff members, including some 778 civilian (although many are ex-military) instructors providing mostly one-on-one or one-on-two driver training across 114 different types of courses, many of which run several times a year, to around 13,000 students.

On any given day there are between 1,000 and 1,200 people undergoing training. But despite these grand statistics it is the personal tailoring of the training at DST that shines out, and individuals are given as long as it takes for them to go through the required training:

"Our responsibility is to train individuals and we put individuals' requirements at the heart of everything we do," says DST's Commandant Colonel Paul Brook.

DST's mission is to train individuals in driving, transport management, materials handling and Combat Service Support communications in order to meet the operational requirements of the three Services. Colonel Brook explains what this means:

"For a military driver, it's not just a case of being able to get into a vehicle and drive it, the military driver has got to be able to operate that vehicle in all conditions, night and day, sometimes in very adverse conditions, and they've also got to maintain it and, when it goes wrong, be able to specify what's gone wrong so it can be replaced.

"Because, after all, the name of the game is not just to give them the skills to drive the vehicles, but for the vehicle and crew to be a success on operations."

The focus at DST therefore is very much on giving individuals the skills they need to be on operations, and with the British Armed Forces more mobile than ever before, and all vehicles requiring a licence to drive them, the training individuals receive at DST is vital to mission success.

"Iraq and Afghanistan have really focused a change in this area," says Major Alan Treadwell, the Officer Commanding Military Training Division at DST. "You can't just have one guy who knows how to drive a vehicle, everyone needs to know."

The aim is to get an individual competent and confident with the equipment they might be required to drive and able to deploy on operations just 11 days from starting a course at DST.

That's against a background of the average recruit being aged from 17 to 29 years, with the majority being 18 and some as young as 17, who all have a raft of requirements. Only eight per cent of the 40-60 new students arriving at DST every day have any kind of previous licence.

Phase two training at DST - the basic licence acquisition course - is therefore the bread and butter of the school, running 245 times a year, with last year 4,515 personnel taking it.

The course is run at DST's driver training wing, where there are 29 full-time and 29 part-time driving examiners.  Up to 85 practical tests are taken a day, and re-sits can be taken within 24 hours, much faster than for the ordinary public, and according to Geoff Sidwell, the Training Support Co-ordinator, the driving industry is very jealous of DST's ability to test their own people.

Military learner drivers still have to drive on roads in the "real" world outside the school to pass their tests - but don't underestimate the value of the training that can be done inside the wire.  As Geoff puts it:

"800 odd students set off every morning. We are our own traffic, and it's chaos out there."

The course is intensive, with six to eight hours a day spent in the car by each individual as well as classroom theory lessons. It takes an average of two weeks for someone to get a licence. But again, it is the individual's requirements that count as Colonel Brook explains:

"Some people are great at hands-on driving, others better at the theory but an individual stays here as long as it takes to pass the course, and we go at their speed. Every person is managed individually."

And should an individual be a natural then they can put in for the test as soon as they are ready:

"Some take five days, why keep them here longer? For some it takes three weeks, so it all averages out. The pass rate for phase two is 87 per cent, but this doesn't show how good we are. For some people walking will be a way of life."

With around 4,000 students a year at DST undertaking the basic licence acquisition course, some further 8,000 are already trained soldiers, seamen or airmen who get specific training in driving civilian and military light and heavy goods vehicles as well as more specialist military vehicles, including the Mastiff and Saxon armoured vehicles, Vectors, the BV series of All Terrain Mobile Platforms, OSHKOSH fuel/water tankers and the Rough Terrain Container Handlers which are equivalent in weight to ten double-decker London buses.

The Snatch Land Rover - widely used on current operations, especially in Iraq - is so heavy due to its armour that a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence is needed to drive it.

Individuals are taught to drive with hazardous cargoes as well as how to drive in convoys, how to conceal the vehicles and use the radios, how to secure heavy loads, how to operate buckets on diggers and even how to launch boats from the backs of trucks.

"We're trying to match the capability of the machines with the capability of the operator and crew," says Colonel Brook, "otherwise it's just a useless chunk of metal."

What's more, unlike many of the world's Armies, individuals at DST are trained to a recognised professional standard. The British Army used to claim Crown exemption from having to comply with the rules that govern the carefully-regulated road transport industry, but this is not the case anymore.  DST-trained drivers develop a good baseline of skills that can be used after they leave the Services, which in turn makes the Forces an attractive first career.

Demand for trained military drivers keeps surging onwards, with challenges such as all Royal Marines now needing to be trained and, for the first time, all infantry soldiers - who account for 40 per cent of the Army - also needing a licence.

In 1996, the year the decision was made to locate British military driver training in one location, DST provided 3,000 licences. 

This year they are on-target to provide 23,000.  It seems that wherever British Forces go next, the rapidly-growing Defence School of Transport will help them get there.