At the Amendola air base, the first qualification course entirely held in Italy for pilots and sensor operators on remote piloted aircraft has been completed Predator. The Aeronautica Militare, thanks to the recent acquisition of the MQ-1 simulator at the 28 ° Group of the 32 ° Stormo, thus becomes the first European air force to carry out en casa the whole training phase of APR strategic class setting up. This capacity goes alongside the basic training courses, preparatory to the achievement of qualifications and qualifications related to the piloting of "Tactical", "Light" and "Mini and Micro" APR systems or for the use of their sensors, carried out by 'Aeronautica Militare through the Center of Excellence for Remote Piloted Aircraft, also in favor of the other Armed Forces and other Departments and Armies of the State.
The new simulation system allows you to fully carry out the various stages of the training process, from that of "Launch and Recovery", or relative to the management of the aircraft during ground, take-off and landing operations, to that of "Mission Control ", a purely tactical phase that allows reaching the area of operations for the collection of information on the assigned objective, as well as the entire training part concerning the management and resolution of emergencies in flight and on the ground.
The new training platform supplied to the Apulian Department integrates those already used by the Center of Excellence for Remotely Piloted Aircraft and consisting of the "UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) Battle Lab", a cluster of simulators representative of different UAS systems of the classes Mini, Tactical and MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) which allows the joint use of the three platforms in complex virtual scenarios, and by the most recent APR simulator of strategic missions acquired at the beginning of 2018 as part of a multinational training program of the European Defense Agency (EDA) called "Interoperable MALE RPAS ISR Training" (IMRIT). Italy and France are currently the only European countries to already have this advanced simulation system in service, which will also gradually be equipped with the Centers of Excellence and the military RPA Schools of Germany, Greece, Holland, Poland, Spain (MALE RPAS Community ), Belgium and the United Kingdom (European Air Group). A "training framework" which, once completed, will further improve interoperability between Member States, with training advantages and significant savings in resources.
All these capabilities, expressed by the Air Force with the 32 ° Stormo and the APR Excellence Center, make Amendola Airport a unique reference point in the national interforces for training in the Remote Pilot Aircraft segment. The acquisition and the progressive integration in the training and then operational processes of these new advanced simulation systems and their progressive federation in a single network constitutes one of the fundamental pillars of the new era "Aeronautica 4.0", an innovation process at 360 ° that it involves all the main sectors of the Armed Force, from personnel to logistics, passing precisely for training and operations. A distributed network of systems that allow the simulation of live, virtual and constructive type generating complex operating environments and ensuring the exchange of information to achieve the decision-making superiority that constitutes the common denominator and the real added value for success in modern military operations . Success that must start by proposing particularly faithful and integrated training models.
A concrete example of effective integration between command and control centers, intelligence sensors such as APR aircraft - as well as assets and assets of other Armed Forces, was the "Spartan Alliance 2018", a complex exercise conducted in cooperation with the Warrior Preparation Center of the US Air Force Command in Europe. It was a fully computerized exercise event, in which aircraft and systems created an extremely complex and elaborate aerial operation, placed in a virtual and fictitious environment, but totally adhering to the current geostrategic scenarios.
I Predator of the Air Force are remotely piloted aircraft (APR) of strategic level that, thanks to the peculiar characteristics of flight autonomy, speed and range of action, are used in a wide range of missions, both in the maritime and terrestrial environment: from the patrolling, searching and rescue, specific surveying and surveillance missions carried out in order to acquire high-quality images of assigned objectives in real time. These systems, controlled by a ground station (Ground Control Station) by means of advanced data-links and satellite links, can fly at great distances from the starting point, offering long time spent on the areas of interest with no risk for the committed personnel in the management of the mission, elements that make these systems extremely valuable also in activities to support the community and for the security of the country, such as border control, environmental monitoring, support to police forces and intervention in case of natural disasters.
