17 The Department does not yet have approved plans for every training package needed to deliver its current Phase 2 aircrew training requirements. Ascent has been contracted to provide, through the MFTS, the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010 aircrew requirements. These requirements subsequently increased following the 2015 Review. Therefore, the MFTS was designed to provide 76 fewer trained aircrew than the Department's 2018-19 requirement. Since the 2015 Review, the Department has been considering and testing its options, developing business cases and putting additional commercial arrangements in place. For example, in July 2019, it agreed to expand the MFTS helicopter training capacity. The Department expects to make decisions for rear crew and multi-engine training by the end of 2019. As such, the Department expects to start incrementally increasing the number of trained students from 2020, with a fully expanded system from 2023 (paragraphs 1.18 and 3.6).
18 To increase the number of trained aircrew, the Department uses other providers outside the MFTS. In 2019-20, it expects to train 125 aircrew in other ways, such as through civilian training providers, at a cost of £15 million. Students following these routes need to complete additional military training, which the Department recognises may cost more than if those students completed the MFTS training (paragraphs 3.4 and 3.5, and Figure 13).
19 The Department has not yet fully addressed the recommendations in our 2015 report to ensure it maximises the potential benefits of the MFTS. Our 2015 report recommended that the Department should improve both the MFTS commercial arrangements and performance information across the training process. In June 2019, the Department and Ascent formalised joint transformation projects to improve commercial incentives and performance data. In particular:
• Commercial incentives. Ascent and the Department are discussing revised commercial terms to incentivise increases in the number of students completing training, reductions in training times and decreases in costs. Ascent continues to be paid primarily for service availability, with a small proportion of payments - £7.4 million (1.4%) as at March 2019 - for completing courses (paragraphs 3.7 to 3.13).
• Whole-process performance information. Our 2015 report recommended that the Department establish a baseline to measure, monitor and evaluate performance across all three phases of the training process. Although compromised by a lack of historical information, it has assessed Phase 2 training times. However, the central team does not yet collate data to assess the time taken across the full process.
In addition, it does not yet have data to assess the cost to train aircrew or data on how many students complete their full training (paragraphs 3.14 to 3.17).