Two Sailors from the United Kingdom's (U.K.) Royal Navy completed instruction at one of Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC) schoolhouses, Nov. 2.

Lt. Nathan Rees and Lt. Andrew Roberts completed the Air Traffic Control School's Carrier Air Traffic Control Center (CATCC) operations course, a six-week advanced course designed to cover the organization, directives, rules, procedures, phraseology and equipment related to CATCC and carrier air operations.

Roberts said service members chosen to participate in the exchange program were selected based on ability and availability, with an end goal of implementing lessons learned during the course into future Royal Navy projects.

"We're going to learn how you guys do your carrier operations over here and take it back home and apply it to the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, which will be working-up over summer next year," he said. "We'll be getting qualified on positions we'll be using back home while underway, and getting experience we can use to train up other air traffic controllers in the U.K. to operate aircraft from sea."

The CATCC course encompasses shipboard organization, operational directives, and operation of radars, communications systems and informational display systems.

Cmdr. Michael Therrien, departmend head, NATTC Air Traffic Control School, said the course--which is a mix of classroom instruction and simulated operational conditions--serves to ensure both U.S. Navy and foreign national students from partner nations have the tools they need to ensure aircraft carrier operations are conducted safely.

"The majority of the course is spent in the Air Traffic Control School's CATCC Laboratory, where students are assigned to watch stations and system operations functions under simulated operational conditions," Therrien added. "When I came through [this schoolhouse], there were no foreign nationals that I can remember. Now, seeing the interaction, it's great to see the allied forces working together. The coalition gets stronger because our forces are getting stronger through working together."

Roberts said that while the basic setup of the air traffic control center they'll be using in the future is the same, differences they could encounter would be negated by the experience they'll gain from understanding aircraft carrier air traffic control operations.

"The position and the structure of the [operations] room aboard the Queen Elizabeth [carriers] will be similar to the U.S. Navy carriers," he said. "We're all part of one team, and this is part of providing enhanced carrier cooperation around the world. The U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy are two of the biggest players, so it is important that we can work together with the same operating procedures."

Both Royal Navy Sailors are also scheduled to embark a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier for a deployment, to put into practice what they've learned during the course.

"The knowledge we're taking from this is how the U.S. is operating their fixed wing [aircraft] off of carriers," Rees said. "We've learned a lot [about] recoveries, how you guys launch the aircraft, and it's been extremely valuable just to see how fixed wing operations are at sea, particularly with the intensity and number of aircraft."

According to Chief Air Traffic Controller Michelle Taylor-Sigears, a NATTC Air Traffic Control CATCC instructor, the course curriculum translates across both the U.S. and Royal Navies.

"We do the same thing any international airport can do, except we do it faster and our runway moves," she said. "It's awesome they're coming to see how we do things. Knowing that they're going through our course, as strenuous as it is, and that they're learning what we do and fighting the same fight, is only going to make our forces even stronger. It's pretty awesome knowing that we wear different uniforms, but the overall mission is that everyone gets home safe, the [aircraft] get on deck like they're supposed to, and the mission is complete at the end of the day."

For more than 70 years, the Naval Air Technical Training Center has provided training and increased readiness within the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE). The facility graduates approximately 15,000 Navy, Marine Corps, and international students annually, and is part of the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training (CNATT), which provides single site management for Navy and Marine Corps aviation technical training.

CNATT is the technical training agent for the Naval Aviation Enterprise--an organization designed to advance and sustain naval aviation warfighting capabilities at an affordable cost--and is the largest training center under the Naval Education and Training Command.

For more news from Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, visit www.navy.mil/.