From 7 to 11 July, at Aerospace Operations Command At the (COA) of Poggio Renatico, the “Poggio Space 2025”, the first in a series of Italian Air Force initiatives aimed at promoting integration between conventional air capabilities and space capabilities.
The training objective was to enhance the’Interoperability and the synchronisation of effects between the spatial and air domains in a crisis context, an objective achieved through the federation of the simulated Poggio Space exercise with the real COMAO 25-7 air exercise.
The exercise was planned and managed by the “Space Guardian”from the Centre Space Situational Awareness (C-SSA) of the COA based on the strategic objectives identified by the General Office for Space of the Air Force Staff and with the contribution of specialist personnel from PISQ (Poligono Interforze di Salto di Quirra, in Sardinia), RSV – DASAS (Experimental Flight Department of the Aeronautical and Space Experimentation Division), ReSTOGE (Technical Operational Support Department for Electronic Warfare) and CNMCA (National Centre for Meteorology and Climatology), located in Pratica di Mare (Rome).
The exercise scenario simulated the’escalation of an international crisis, affecting both the space and air domains. The proposed events primarily concerned activities related to Space Situational Awareness realistic, both classical ones and those linked to possible military uses of space, such as: atmospheric re-entry of space objects, fragmentation in orbit, collision analysis, proximity operations between satellites (even adversarial ones), communication jamming phenomena (due to intense solar activity or jamming by enemy assets).
The Poggio Space it was an opportunity to integrate, for the first time, aspects related to electromagnetic spectrum operations within a real flight activity. This, in order to test operational continuity as a function of system availability. Satellite navigation PNT (Positioning Navigation Timing) and potentially degraded satellite communications. Specifically, a GPS signal jamming activity was conducted – using ReSTOGE equipment. This particular activity had a dual purpose: to train crews to fly in a hostile electromagnetic environment, and to be able to geolocate the sources of interference and neutralise them with the support of air assets.
Furthermore, within the same COMAO, an ALARP scenario was carried out (Air Landed Aircraft Refuelling Point), to also verify and test the capability air expeditionary in the use of 5th generation aircraft. In this incident, two F-35A aircraft from the 32nd Wing of Amendola, having just landed and with engines still running, refuelled on the ground (colloquially known as “Sunbaked pit”ready to take off quickly for the continuation and completion of the assigned mission.
Essentially, it is a tactical refuelling by tankers with specific qualifications and training, useful for extending the operational range of aircraft, even in hostile or non-permissive environments. A realistic and complex event, which involved not only aircraft (C-130J from the 46tha Pisa Air Brigade, HH-101 of the 9th Wing from Grazzanise and F-35A of the 32nd Wing from Amendola) but also personnel from the 17th Raiders Wing with CCT (Combat Controller).
To the COMAO scenario, which took place largely in the Eastern Sardinia airspace, assets of the PISQ's Electronic Warfare (transmitters and mock-up, the Command and Control Room (PCC), as well as vehicles and personnel deployed in the Range areas and on land, and at the Capo San Lorenzo Detachment where, with pre-coordinated positions and timings, they contributed to simulating moving units, thereby increasing the realism of the activity.
Ultimately, it was about engaging a multiplicity of strategic sectors of the Air Force for which support from space is increasingly crucial, fuelling a continuous virtuous circle of operational effects between the two domains, space and air, in order to increase the interaction capabilities between the components, strengthen the country's deterrence and security.
