Lowpassage.com

Taking place between May 9 and 20 at Cambrai airbase, in northern France, NATO Tiger Meet (NTM11) has been attended by about 60 planes and helicopters belonging to the Austrian, Czech Republic, German, Hellenic, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, Swiss and Slovak air forces. From a simple meeting of flying units sharing a Tiger (or feline) emblem, the NTM has become a multi-national mid-size exercise offering a two-week program that includes all types of air-to-air and air-to-ground and a wide variety of support missions, comprising CSAR and large COMAOs.

Read the rest on my weblog: NATO Tiger Meet 2011: a real exercise with some interesting “hardware” rather than a gathering of friends

I spent Apr. 12, 2011, (Day 25 of Odyssey Dawn/Unified Protector) at Trapani-Birgi, one of the most active forward operating bases for the Libyan crisis. The airbase is the operative headquarters of the Italian Air Force contingent, to be soon become a Task Group “Air” and put under the direct command of Col. Mauro Gabetta, Cdr of the 37° Stormo. The base permanently hosts the NATO Forward Operating Base and, since Odyssey Dawn began, the Task Force Libeccio, the air detachment of the Canadian Armed Forces deployed on Operation Mobile. The overall flying activity was pretty intense on Day 25 with several Tornado ECR and IDS missions since early morning, a CC-150 tanker sortie and 2 RAF VC-10s sorties plus the usual training activity of the local based 18° Gruppo with its F-16 ADFs. The Typhoons did not fly until the evening, most probably because scheduled for night CAPs. As the 37° Stormo PAO, Lt.Col. Di Battista explained: “there’s no fixed schedule since the operative activity depends on NATO taskings. There are days in which the flying activity is mainly during daylight and others when it is shifted towards night”. The base is operative on an H24 basis.

Read the rest of the article on my weblog: Operation Unified Protector (was Odyssey Dawn) explained (Day 25)

On Jan. 20, 2011, 14 F-15Es belonging to the 48FW of the USAFE based at RAF Lakenheath deployed to Decimomannu airbase. During the deployment, that ended on Feb. 4 (even if 6 aircraft returned to the UK on Feb. 2), the Strike Eagles usually performed two daily waves, almost always launching up to 10 aircraft that flew A/G missions in the Capo Frasca range or A/A missions in the restricted areas located to the East of Sardinia. On Feb. 2, the Strike Eagles performed DACT (Dissimilar Air Combat Training) vs the Italian F-2000 Typhoons of the 4° Stormo, based in Grosseto. Deployed to Deci in those days were also 7 AV-8B+ Harrier of the I GrupAer of the Marina Militare (Italian Navy). The following pictures and those you can see on the main site at the address http://cencio4.wordpress.com/category/494fs-deci/ were taken by me and Giovanni Maduli on Feb. 1 and 2.

On Jan. 17, 2011, 11 F-16s belonging to the Royal Danish Air Force deployed to Grosseto airbase, Italy, to undertake training operations with the local based Eurofighter Typhoon of the 4° Stormo of the Aeronautica Militare (Italian Air Force, ItAF). Dubbed “Winter Hide 2011″ the deployment was planned to enable the Danish pilots to train in the mild Italian climate (since bad weather affects flying operations in Denmark during this season) until Feb. 11.
For more details about the deployment, please visit the main site at the following address: http://cencio4.wordpress.com/tag/winter-hide-2011/

Located in the northern part of Germany, Wittmundhafen (or Wittmund) is the homebase of the Jagdgeschwader 71 (JG71) equipped with the McDonnell Douglas F-4F Phantom. The unit, that made its last detachment in Decimomannu last Sept. (read: Ciao German Phantoms!) and is named “Richthofen” after the WWI German ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the “Red Baron”, is the last German wing equipped with the F-4s, since the Luftwaffe is in the process of replace the “Rhinos” with the Eurofighter Typhoon. Being scheduled for 2011 the withdrawal of the type from service, Giovanni Maduli went to Wittmund to report about the operations of the last German Phantoms.