Flag Officer Sea Training - Delivering World Class Sea Training

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FOST (Flag Officer Sea Training - UK ) has a wolrd wide reputation of excelence in providing operetional sea training.

Flag Officer Sea Training Delivering World Class Sea Training

"The most important single factor in a Naval Service is the quality of its personnel and their training."
(Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine)

In today’s uncertain world there are many challenges that face the Royal Navy, ranging from high intensity warfare, to peacekeeping and providing humanitarian aid. As a result, the Royal Navy needs to be highly capable, flexible and responsive to change.

From the Naval Bases at Plymouth, the Clyde in Scotland and a small team at Northwood in Middlesex, Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) provides Operational Sea Training (OST) for all surface ships, submarines and Royal Fleet Auxiliaries of the Royal Navy by a dedicated team of experts, led by Flag Officer Sea Training. Together with land and air units and with increasing numbers of NATO and foreign participants conducting training under its guidance. FOST has established a worldwide reputation for excellence. Over 100 ships and submarines from the Royal Navy and navies of NATO and allied nations benefit from FOST's training expertise each year.

Training is delivered as and when required throughout a unit’s life. FOST also supports both individual and collective training ashore for submarines.
Royal Navy celebrates ten years of sea training at Plymouth On October 4th 2005 the Royal Navy’s operational sea training school, known as Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST), is celebrating its ten-year anniversary of being based at Devonport Naval Base.

The centre of excellence, which trains all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and submarines, was based at Portland Naval Base until its closure in September 1995. The whole operation then moved to Plymouth with some staff at Faslane Naval Base and Northwood.

The training lasts for up to six weeks and covers a wide variety of scenarios that a warship could face in both peacetime and war - including assisting a community devastated by a hurricane. This is carried out in a realistic mock-up of a disaster-hit village at Bull Point. The ship’s company land on a nearby beach and have to help the local population get back on their feet. They use their skills to rescue a villager trapped in a car in a raging river, they fight fires and help people who are trapped in collapsed buildings. The training is made more realistic by using local actors who regularly take up roles of injured, scared and sometimes abusive locals who stick rigidly to their characters.

FOST also judges whether or not ship’s companies are fit to go to sea. This usually happens when ships and submarines have been in refit, have had maintenance work carried out or are about to deploy to sea. The crew face rigorous tests before they are given the green light to be available for deployment. These are realistic scenarios with crews facing simulated fires and floods as the ship comes under attack from fighter aircraft and even submarines and this culminates each week in the ‘Thursday War’, which is fought off the south west coast.

It’s not just Royal Navy ships that benefit from this training. Many navies from around the globe sail into Plymouth to learn from our experts. 26 countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Chile, Turkey, Greece, Portugal and Romania are all trained here.

600 specialist training staff are employed by FOST which is headed by Rear Admiral Roger Ainsley. He said: “Our aim at FOST is to train our ships to be ready for everything. The training is intensive and teamwork is definitely the key to success. This is something that we encourage from day oneâ€.
Here you can post more detailed information about your country's navy participation in FOST and if any available ranking data.
 
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