It ended on Thursday, April 30, with the stop at the 32nd Wing of Amendola, the cycle of visits Chief of the Defence Staff, General Luciano Portolano, At some of the Armed Forces' Departments present in Puglia.
As part of the visit, General Portolano deepened his knowledge of the 32nd Squadron, which is used daily in national air defense and operations. Air Policing along the eastern flank of NATO. The 32nd Air Wing represents, in fact, the only European Wing to jointly deploy 5th-generation aircraft F-35, Both in the conventional version and in vertical takeoff, in addition to remote-controlled aircraft MQ-9A.
After meeting with the flight groups, the Chief of the General Staff of the Defense then visited the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Centre of Excellence, a single point of reference in the inter-service context for the APR subject, which ensures training and procedural standardization to guarantee maximum interoperability both at inter-service and inter-agency levels.
Upon meeting the staff, General Portolano wished to acknowledge the daily commitment of all the military personnel on duty, recognizing their professionalism of the highest standard and their outstanding adaptability to innovation that characterize the Departments visited.
The visit to Amendola also included a stop at the “Cacciatori Puglia” Airborne Squadron of the Carabinieri, based at the airbase, and was the final stop of a broader institutional and operational tour in the region. In the previous days, General Portolano had traveled to Lecce and Brindisi for institutional meetings, also visiting the “Cavalleggeri di Lodi” Regiment (15th) of the Army in Lecce, the 3rd Naval Division and the San Marco Marine Brigade in Brindisi.
The initiative, which follows similar ones recently carried out in Campania and Lombardy, had the aim of verifying the State of readiness and the capabilities that can be expressed by the various Departments of the Armed Forces, within the framework of the implementation of the Strategic Priorities of the Chief of the General Staff of the Defense In particular, the one related to the “Balancing Components”. This Strategic Priority aims to maximize technological consistency between the Armed Forces, an essential condition for conducting multidomain operations in an allied context or on a national basis.
The Strategic Priorities derive directly from National Military Strategy They represent the driving initiatives that stem from the vision of the Chief of the Defence Staff. These are cross-cutting programs, linked together by the strong push for evolution in a multidomain perspective of the Military Instrument. The multidomain represents a paradigm for conceiving, planning, and conducting operations of the very latest generation, which requires high technological capabilities and is indispensable for maintaining cognitive superiority in a highly conflictual and complex context, which requires a high speed of decision-making.
