The ceremony for the 7th anniversary of the Aerocooperation school, a NATO-accredited Defense Joint Force Training Center that provides excellent teaching in the field of management, interpretation and operational analysis of remote sensing images and in the field of air-to-ground cooperation operations.
The event, in which civil and military authorities took part, was opened by an intervention by the commander of the School of Aerocooperation (SAC), Brigadier General Glauco Luigi Mora, who underlined how "This day does not mark a point of arrival, but a renewed commitment on the road to the challenges that the future places before us. The opening of new domains such as space requires due attention also in the field of training: the School of Aerocooperation has taken up these new challenges and from next year will organize, in cooperation with the Defense Space Operations Command, the first introductory courses to operations in the fourth dimension ".
"We are faced with a training center of excellence of the entire Defense, capable of a concrete educational offer in continuous evolution and in step with technological innovations, constantly adhering to national needs and open to the needs of allied and friendly countries", underlined the chief of staff of the Air Force, air squad general Luca Goretti, who presided over the ceremony representing the chief of defense staff, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone.
"All the operations, especially from the second postwar period onwards, up to the most recent operational theaters, have confirmed that the achievement of success is strongly conditioned by the effective conduct of integrated actions between the various components of the armed forces. The SAC can capitalize on these 70 years of history - concluded the gen. Goretti - confirming itself as a reference for the training of highly specialized figures, both of the armed forces and of other Departments, destined to operate in areas where it is of fundamental importance to be able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by increasingly advanced technologies ".
The ceremony ended with a "live" demonstration of an operation Close Air Support (close air support) to the forces deployed on the ground, with the use of ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) assets and ground attack which, guided from the ground by operators Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), neutralized the threat and allowed a subsequent operation of Personnel Recovery, by special forces operators with rotary wing assets for the recovery of isolated personnel in a hostile and non-permissive environment.
In recent years, the School has consolidated and expanded its training offer with highly specialized courses relating to the management, interpretation and operational analysis of remotely sensed images from electro-optical and RADAR, airport and satellite sensors. Furthermore, the courses for "Joint Terminal Attack Controller", "Joint Personnel Recovery", "Joint Targeting" and "Joint Fires", most of which are included in the catalog of courses offered by NATO. In an inter-ministerial and dual approach, these capabilities are also made available to other institutions, as happened for example in favor of the civil protection department in the event of earthquakes and natural disasters.
The School also collaborates with university institutes in the field of archaeological research (an activity for which it was awarded the "gold medal for merit of school, culture and art") and develops synergies with the defense industry, making available the knowledge and experience gained in the field for the experimentation of specific simulation software for training in air support close to the forces on the ground.
The experience and training of the school is made available to institutions such as European Satellite Center (SATCEN), ESA (European Space Agency), ASI (Italian Space Agency) and the ministry for cultural heritage and activities.
