Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance operations, both national and coalition, with remote-piloted aircraft continue with the MQ-9A weapon system.
On December 19 last, after 18 years of service in the Armed Forces, with a transfer flight from the 61st APR Flight Wing at Sigonella to the 32nd Stormo at Amendola, the operational activity of the RPAS system came to an end (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) MQ-1C, designated Predator Alpha plus.
The sober ceremony of phase out It took place at the Puglia base in the presence of the Commander of the Air Force, General of the Air Force Alberto Biavati, the Commander of the Combat Forces, Gen. D.A. Luigi Del Bene, and the Chief of Staff of the C.S.A., Gen. D.A. Andrea Argieri. A representative of all the units of the 28th and 61st A.P.R. Flight Group also took part in the event, along with personnel from the 32nd Air Wing.
“In modern operational theaters, Information Superiority represents an essential element of strategic importance, without which every effort and even the most modern system would be useless., Colonel Roberto Massarotto, Commander of the 32nd Air Wing, emphasized this.“To fulfill the new missions that were emerging, as early as 2004, the Italian Air Force acquired the MQ-1 system, a non-fast aircraft, but one that stands out for its persistence, discretion, silence, ability to collect and disseminate data, and dual use capabilities. However, the successes achieved by this machine would never have been achieved without the invaluable work of the men and women of the 61st and 28th Squadrons. A precious and arduous work, carried out away from the spotlight, in silence, where no one can see or hear you and without perhaps being able to share, with those close to you, the satisfaction of a particularly important success.
“You have opened an era, with those of you who were there from the beginning and with those who came after, in radically changing the way the Air Force operates,”, General Biavati stated this while addressing the women and men of the 28th and 61st APR Flight Group. “What you have done is something historic and epic, something that will remain forever written in the history of our Armed Forces, and for that I must thank you because without your work, many of the things the Air Force has done in recent years would never have been possible.””. The Air Force Commander, in his speech, also wanted to highlight that 70% of the flight hours of the Predator A+ were carried out in operational missions and only 30% in training missions, a unique phenomenon among all the aircraft of the Italian Air Force, further demonstrating how the activity Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance – ISR, in the current scenarios, is one of the most valuable ones.
From the moment it went online, the’MQ-1 It represented a turning point for the Armed Forces, enabling them to carry out long-term operational missions in a vast range of activities that range – in terms of type and purpose – from military use to civil protection, totaling, in more than 3800 sorties, more than 31,000 flight hours, of which approximately 20,000 were carried out by the 28th APR Flight Squadron from Amendola and more than 11,000 by the 61st APR Flight Squadron from Sigonella.
There have been numerous military and coalition missions in which he has been deployed in various parts of the globe, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Horn of Africa, Kuwait, playing a fundamental role in supporting and ensuring the safety of troops on the ground through valuable monitoring and surveillance from above, particularly for unarmed escorts of convoys in hostile environments, for the detection of improvised explosive devices and for monitoring operational targets. Equally fundamental is his contribution to controlling national borders and monitoring the territory, within the framework of activities aimed at maintaining public order, search and rescue, and environmental monitoring, such as his contribution to the security of international summits such as the G7, G8 and G20, collaboration with the Department of Civil Protection for public disaster events, and monitoring of fires in the Land of Fire.
The UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), entered into service in December 2004 and already deployed in a mission outside national borders in January 2005, enabled the projection of networks and sensors in an operational theater, at distances previously prohibitive, in a persistent and imperceptible manner, proving to be an indefatigable multiplier of resources, capable of fulfilling a considerable amount of the missions of the air doctrine that range from CAS (Close Air Support), to the CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue), at Target Acquisition. But the most direct innovation was the opportunity to increase the Situational Awareness in “Real TimeBecause sophisticated on-board sensors transmit images in real time, making the scenario of the area of intervention immediately available to decision-makers.
The 32nd Wing is under the command of the Combat Forces Command (CFC) in Milan, whose assigned mission is to acquire and maintain the operational readiness of all air defence, attack, and reconnaissance units, ensuring the operational efficiency of weapon systems, equipment, and materiel, as well as personnel training and the constant updating and optimisation of operational procedures, in accordance with the guidelines of the High Commands. The CFC is under the command of the Air Squad Command, which exercises its responsibilities concerning the training, preparation, and operational readiness of its Units, so that they acquire and maintain the expected levels of operational readiness. After achieving the Initial Operational Capability (IOC), which took place in 2018, has participated, since 2019, in NATO operations in Air Policing beyond national borders. Since February 2020, the 32nd Wing is the only unit on the European scene to jointly employ both F-35A (CTOL) and F-35B (STOVL), contributing, with the 5th generation aircraft, to the capability Air Expeditionary of the Armed Forces. Moreover, using the Remotely Piloted Aircraft (APR) MQ-1C and MQ-9A, the Department carries out operations Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance, Both national and coalition aircraft. Finally, through the MB-339 aircraft, the 32nd Air Wing completes the training of APR pilots to maintain an adequate operational level on traditional-wing aircraft.
