RAF Patch Est Royal Air Force CTTO Central Trials Tactics Organisation TLT Training

RAF Patch Royal Air Force CTTO Central Trials and Tactics Organisation TLT Tactical Leadership Training 1980s Woven merrowed edge 84mm by 74mm three and five sixteenth inches by two and fifteen sixteenth inches.

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The RAF Central Tactics and Trials Organization was activated on 30 April 1968 at RAF High Wycombe to coordinate trails of operational modifications to RAF Strike Command and RAF Air Support Command aircraft and to coordinate the development of operational tactics. CTTO HQ was collocated with HQ Strike Command.

For aircraft operational modification trials the Organisation operated a CTTO Trials Section at HQ Air Support Command Upavon and a CTTO Liaison Cell at AAEE Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down. In addition CTTO Trials Co-ordination officers were based at each station where trials were to be flown.

Tactical Studies staff included a Fighter Interception Rule Writing Group and liaison officers from the Royal Navy and the Army in order to maintain close contact with tactical thinking outside the Royal Air Force.

In addition to publication of tactics manuals and updates CTTO organised and ran large scale 10 day Tactical Leadership Training TLT exercises to develop the Tactical Leadership Skills of frontline Aircrew day or night and to increase aircrew success and survival in conflicts. Exercises required participating front line and support aircrews to undertake daily missions from scenario briefing and mission planning through to implementation and debriefing against exercise enemy forces.

Coalition operations during the 1991 Gulf War showed the importance of mission support and forces coordination. Central Tactics and Trials Organization was inactivated on 1 October 1993 when the Air Warfare Centre was activated at RAF Waddington a new central establishment to combine CTTO with the Department of Air Warfare the Electronic Warfare Operational Support Establishment and the HQ Strike Command Operational Research Branch.   

This patch dates from the 1980s.