The latest Italian Air Force (Aeronautica
Militare, AM) deployment, dubbed
‘Task Force Air [TFA] 36° Stormo’, arrived
at Ämari in early January 2018 as the
46th BAP rotation, with four jets and
a detachment of approximately 110
personnel. It represents the third time
the AM has covered the BAP mission,
after two back-to-back deployments to
Šiauliai in 2015.
Following initial logistical ights, the
main party arrived on January 6, with
the Euro ghters supported by a single
KC-767. Two ghters came from the 4°
Stormo at Grosseto and two from the
36° Stormo at Gioia del Colle, all of which
come under the control of detachment
commander Col Eros Zaniboni.A persistent problem
‘Russian government aircraft use routes
over international waters for their
relocation to and from the Kaliningrad
Oblast exclave’, explains Lõhmus. ‘They
often fail to respect international safety
rules, not communicating ight plans or
not using their transponders. Therefore
they do not have communications
with civilian air tra c — for us it’s a
safety issue. Between Estonian and
Finnish airspace, we have to intervene.
Therefore jets from Ämari get airborne
to intercept.’
The strategic importance of Ämari led to
plans for the creation of a US-Baltic-Nordic
training center here. Expansion started
two years ago with the construction ofThe Aeronautica Militare has
once again deployed
Eurofi ghters to the Baltic
to cover the enduring air
policing mission in the region
amid renewed tensions.REPORT AND PHOTOS
Giovanni Colla and Remo GuidiS
INCE 2004, NATO has
undertaken the Baltic Air
Policing (BAP) mission to
safeguard the airspace in
this region by deploying
ghters to the Lithuanian
Air Force base at Šiauliai in the north-
west of the country. Ämari in Estonia
was subsequently opened up as the hub
for a second, augmenting, detachment.
‘The rst [detachment] at the base —
in 2014 — was the Royal Danish Air
Force with four F-16s’, says Ämari base
commander Lt Col Ülar Lõhmus. ‘Since
then there have been four German
detachments, two British, two Spanish
and now the four F-2000A Typhoons of
the Italian Air Force.’A live-armed
F-2000A tears
across the frozen
Baltic landscape
as a QRA mission
gets under way.54 May 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
54-57 Italian Typhoons C.indd 54 20/03/2018 11:03