What is the RAF CBAT?
CBAT stands for Computer Based Aptitude Tests. It is a group of computer-based assessments used by the Royal Air Force during selection for certain aircrew, air operations and specialist roles.
CBAT is not really a knowledge test. You are not expected to revise aircraft systems, memorise RAF history or know anything particularly advanced about aviation.
Instead, the tests are designed to see how you deal with things like numbers, spatial information, memory, multitasking, concentration and hand-eye coordination.
Some tasks are fairly straightforward on their own. The difficulty usually comes from having to work quickly, keep track of several things at once, or make decisions while information is changing.
For relevant roles, current RAF recruitment information places CBAT at the Officers and Aircrew Selection Centre at RAF College Cranwell.
Preparing for Canadian or Australian selection instead?
CBAT Academy also supports two other computer-based aircrew aptitude systems, each with its own guide and practice library:
CFAST (Canadian Armed Forces Aircrew Selection Test) documents 20 specific tests. CBAT Academy's CFAST training profile trains the matching skill for each of them, using colours/letters/numbers and mathematics reasoning tasks that are not part of the current RAF CBAT set, and leaving out FLAG, Directions & Distances, Dynamic Projection, Verbal Logic and Visualisation, which are not part of the documented CFAST battery.
Australian selection (publicly referenced in the context of systems such as MACTS and OATB) is handled differently: there is not enough public evidence to map specific Academy exercises to specific Australian subtests, so that track is presented as general aviation aptitude training rather than a simulation of the official Australian battery, with no invented pass/fail thresholds.
Set your training profile from Account Settings after signing in, and the Dashboard, Full Battery and Scores pages will automatically scope themselves to the service you selected.
Why does the RAF use CBAT?
A lot of RAF roles involve skills that are difficult to judge from school grades or a normal interview.
Someone working in an aircrew or control role may need to keep track of several aircraft, remember information that is no longer on screen, make quick calculations, interpret changing displays and react accurately at the same time.
CBAT gives the RAF another way of assessing those kinds of abilities before putting somebody through lengthy and expensive training.
That is why the tests vary so much. One might be mostly numerical, another might involve tracking an object with a joystick, and another might ask you to remember changing information while doing something else.
The point is not to see whether you are good at one particular game. It is to build a broader picture of how you process information.
What does CBAT actually test?
There is not one single “CBAT skill.” Different tests put pressure on different areas.
Numerical reasoning
You will come across mental arithmetic, estimation, time, speed, distance and other basic numerical relationships.
The maths is rarely advanced. The pressure comes from doing it accurately and quickly, sometimes while tracking other information.
Being comfortable with basic arithmetic is one of the easiest areas to improve before testing.
Spatial reasoning
Spatial tasks deal with direction, orientation and how objects relate to one another.
That can mean judging angles, working with bearings, mentally rotating shapes or combining different views into one picture.
These tests can feel strange because they are not the sort of thing most people practise in everyday life.
Familiarity helps: bearings, angles and changing viewpoints become easier to process once the method feels normal.
Memory
Some tests show or play information briefly and then ask you to use it later.
That might be a string of numbers, a callsign, an instruction or the previous position of an object.
The important part is often remembering the right information and dropping it once it is no longer useful.
Multitasking
A few of the harder tests combine several simple jobs at once.
You might be monitoring one display, listening for information, remembering something else and controlling an object at the same time.
The individual tasks may be simple, but managing them together can be difficult.
The useful skill is prioritisation: knowing which changing demand needs attention right now instead of trying to perform every part perfectly.
Psychomotor coordination
Some tasks involve physical control using a joystick, pedals or other inputs.
These tests are not just about having fast reactions.
Smooth control usually matters more than aggressive corrections. Constantly overshooting a target will not be solved by reacting faster.
Attention and concentration
Some tests are repetitive on purpose.
You may need to scan a display, wait for a target or continue performing the same task accurately for several minutes.
The challenge is staying consistent after the novelty wears off.
A five-second lapse can sometimes matter more than struggling with one difficult question.
CBAT is different from a normal exam
One of the biggest mistakes people make is treating CBAT like something they can revise for in the same way as a school exam.
There is not a chapter of facts you can memorise and then reproduce on test day.
Knowing what the tasks are like still helps, though.
If you already understand bearings, for example, you do not need to waste mental effort remembering what 090° or 270° means while you are trying to solve the actual problem.
The same applies to arithmetic.
If basic multiplication, division and time calculations are automatic, you have more attention available for the harder parts of the task.
That is really what useful CBAT preparation is about: removing unnecessary difficulty so you can concentrate on the ability the test is actually asking you to use.
Can you prepare for CBAT?
Yes, but there is an important distinction between preparing for the skills and trying to memorise a test.
You can absolutely improve mental arithmetic, get better at estimating bearings, practise short-term memory, become smoother with a joystick and get more comfortable switching between tasks.
You can also become much more efficient once you understand the structure of a task.
Someone seeing an unfamiliar spatial test for the first time has to work out both what the test wants and how to solve it.
Someone who has practised similar exercises can spend much more of their attention on the actual problem.
That familiarity can make a noticeable difference.
Accuracy comes before speed
CBAT is timed, so it is tempting to practise everything as fast as possible from the beginning.
That usually is not the best approach.
If you are making the same mistake over and over, doing it faster will not help.
Get the method right first.
If you are learning bearings, make sure you consistently measure clockwise from north before worrying about answering in two seconds.
If you are practising mental arithmetic, get comfortable solving the problem correctly before trying to shave time off every answer.
Once the process is reliable, then start increasing the pace.
Pay attention to why you get questions wrong
A percentage score only tells you how many answers were right.
It does not tell you what needs fixing.
For example, two people could both score 60% on the same test.
One might understand every question but work too slowly. The other might answer quickly but repeatedly misread the instructions.
Those are completely different problems.
When you practise, try to notice what caused each mistake.
Did you misunderstand the rule? Lose information from memory? Misread the display? Use the wrong perspective? Make an arithmetic error? Rush?
Once you know the reason, you know what to practise.
Multitasking is mostly about prioritisation
A lot of people hear “multitasking” and assume the goal is to do everything perfectly at the same time.
That is rarely realistic.
When several tasks compete for attention, the useful skill is deciding what needs attention right now.
An instruction you only hear once may deserve immediate attention.
A target that is about to disappear may be more important than a routine task that will still be there in ten seconds.
A control task may only need to be kept stable rather than perfectly centred while you deal with something more urgent.
That kind of prioritisation becomes much easier with practice.
Do not let one mistake turn into five
This matters more than people expect.
If you make a mistake during a busy test, the worst thing you can do is spend the next thirty seconds thinking about it.
The task has already moved on.
This is especially true during tracking, memory and multitasking exercises.
You miss something, reset, and deal with what is happening now.
The same applies between tests.
One module feeling terrible does not automatically mean the whole assessment has gone badly.
Once it is finished, leave it behind and focus on the next one.
What should CBAT preparation look like?
You do not need to spend hours every day running complete mock batteries.
In fact, focused practice is usually more useful.
Start by learning what each type of task involves. Then identify which areas give you trouble.
If mental arithmetic is weak, spend some time on arithmetic.
If bearings are confusing, practise bearings separately.
If you lose track of several moving objects, work on tracking and memory exercises.
Once the individual skills are more comfortable, combine them and introduce time pressure.
Closer to the real assessment, longer mixed sessions can be useful for getting used to switching between very different types of tasks.
The aim is to arrive familiar with the demands of the testing, not mentally exhausted from practising six hours a day.
Is CBAT an IQ test?
Not really.
There is some overlap with abilities you might associate with intelligence tests, such as reasoning, memory, processing speed and spatial ability.
But CBAT also includes much more specialised combinations of skills.
Someone can be very strong numerically and struggle with tracking. Another person might be excellent at spatial tasks but find divided attention difficult.
It makes more sense to think of CBAT as a profile of different abilities rather than one overall intelligence score.
Do you need aviation knowledge?
CBAT is primarily about aptitude rather than aviation knowledge.
You do not need to know how to fly an aircraft to understand most of the tasks.
Some exercises use aircraft, maps, instruments or operational-style scenarios because they provide a useful setting for the problem, but the underlying skill might simply be spatial reasoning, arithmetic or attention.
That is why spending weeks memorising aircraft specifications is not useful CBAT preparation.
If the problem is that you struggle with speed-distance-time calculations, practise speed-distance-time calculations.
How important is CBAT?
For roles that use it, CBAT is an important part of selection.
Your results help determine how well your aptitude profile matches the requirements of the occupations you are applying for.
That does not mean CBAT is the only thing that matters.
RAF selection can also involve interviews, medical standards, fitness testing, OASC and other assessments depending on the role.
But strong performance elsewhere does not make CBAT irrelevant.
If your chosen role has an aptitude requirement, you still need to meet it.
What about CBAT pass marks?
This is one area where it is worth being cautious.
There is a lot of discussion online about CBAT scores, role thresholds and supposed pass marks.
The problem is that the RAF does not publish a complete current table showing every subtest, weighting and threshold for every role.
Different jobs can also place different importance on different aptitude areas.
For that reason, third-party score estimates should be treated as exactly that: estimates.
CBAT Academy practice scores are useful for comparing your own performance over time and identifying weak areas, but they are not official RAF results.
See how Academy practice scores and readiness estimates work. Or read the full breakdown of stanines, scoring and role requirements.
What happens on the day?
For relevant roles, current RAF recruitment information places CBAT at the Officers and Aircrew Selection Centre at RAF College Cranwell.
The exact schedule and testing setup can change, so your joining instructions should always take priority over anything you read on a preparation website.
When you are there, read the instructions for every test properly.
Even if something looks familiar from practice, do not assume the rules are identical.
One small change in how a response is entered or how a task is scored can completely change the correct approach.
Current-location and assessment-area details checked against the official RAF Pilot recruitment page in August 2026.
Start with a task-specific guide
Each module guide explains the Academy exercise, controls, scoring, common mistakes and focused drills before you launch practice.
Frequently asked questions
Can CBAT Academy tell me my official score?
No. Academy results are independent training feedback and cannot reproduce an official result or selection decision.
Should I practise every module equally?
Begin broadly, then spend more time on recurring weak processes. Keep some mixed practice so switching between different task types remains familiar.
Are current joining instructions more important than this guide?
Yes. Official instructions, recruiter advice and information issued for your application always take priority because selection processes can change.
Sources and review status
Official RAF recruitment pages support the broad CBAT description and current selection setting used in this guide. Academy exercises, mappings and scores remain independently developed. See the source register for status, scope and last-checked dates.
Ready to start practising?
Choose a test area and build familiarity
The RAF CBAT Practice library covers the individual test areas available on CBAT Academy. Each test has an interactive exercise and a separate guide explaining the task, common mistakes and useful preparation drills. Once you're comfortable with the individual modules, the mock test rehearses them together in one structured assessment.