The past few days have seen the conclusion of the Centurion Warrior 2025, the first Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) exercise of the Italian Air Force, in which fourth and fifth-generation aircraft operated synergistically with a network of simulators and synthetic aircraft, utilising the Link 16 network, in a dedicated scenario conducted in the airspace of the Joint Combined Exercise Zone of Salto di Quirra (PISQ) in Sardinia, forming part of the’Operational Training Infrastructure (OTI).
The’OTI It's an infrastructure designed to develop and improve new weapon systems, reducing costs and ensuring maximum training effectiveness by faithfully and realistically simulating complex operational scenarios that could not be replicated with flight training alone.
The activity was made possible through the development of specific technical solutions, created by Experimental Flight Department. The aircraft operated under the tactical control of dedicated Command and Control units. Virtual Control Reporting Centre (V-CRC) of Poggio Renatico and Licola while a dedicated control room of the Air and Space Operations Preparation Centre (ASOPC) of the Aerospace Operations Command (AOC) managed the adversarial entities in the scenario. The 4th Department of the Air Force General Staff, head of the OTI project, and the General Security Department They managed and coordinated all the necessary arrangements. Among the stakeholders involved, also the Defence Networks Operational Command (COR), for the configuration and management of the network connection between all involved sites. The exercise saw the participation of Eurofighter aircraft of the 4°, 36° and 37th Wing and the F-35s of the 6th and 32nd Wing along with simulators of the respective aircraft, while a pair of Tornados have been synthetically generated.
This event represents a step forward in training, allowing latest-generation real aircraft to operate in the same scenario with “virtual” and simulated aircraft, managed by both pilots in simulators and Artificial Intelligence algorithms, through the use of RIACE, an advanced virtual reality system developed in collaboration with Leonardo.
