After about 180 days in Teatro Operativo, a portion of personnel from the Air Force and the San Marco Regiment returned to Italy. Some of the military personnel who returned to their homeland, operating as part of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, carried out training and “advisoring” activities for the Afghan personnel, the future pilots, and the crews assigned to the MI-17 helicopter at the Shindand airport. The personnel of San Marco, part of the Task Force called “Leone”, employed in Afghanistan since September 2011, was received by Rear Admiral Pasquale Guerra, who has taken command of the Naval Landing Forces since February 6, 2012. The Brindisi Air Force Detachment, under the command of the Deputy Logistics Commander, provides support to the peacekeeping and humanitarian operations of the United Nations Global Service Center (UNGSC) and the World Food Programme (WFP), ensuring 24/7 technical and medical assistance to the passing aircraft belonging to NATO countries. It also manages the control of commercial air traffic in transit at Brindisi Airport: in 2011 the Air Traffic Control Service handled 22,000 movements, an increase of 3% compared to the previous year, allowing the Brindisi airport to register over 2 million passengers in transit during the year.
