Blue Flag 2019 completed

(To air Force)
16/11/19

The international Blue Flag 2019 exercise, organized by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) at the Ovda military airport (Israel), has ended. The exercise takes place on a biennial basis and this year saw the participation for the first time of four F-35 of Amendola's 32 ° Stormo, four Eurofighter of the 4 ° Stormo of Grosseto and a CAEW of the 14 ° Stormo of Pratica di Mare besides about 200 military pilots, technical and logistic personnel.

In addition to the Israeli and Italian assumptions, the US, German and Greek Air Forces took part in the exercise.
The objective of the exercise was to train in a complex scenario, mainly carrying out "COMposite Air Operation" (COMAO) missions that included low and very low altitude (BBQ) operations. Several tactics and evasive maneuvers against the systems have also been tested Surface Air Missile (SAM) which envisaged the use of different countermeasures such as chaffs and flares.

In the fourth edition of the BF19 exercise the integration between the 4ª and 5ª generation of different nationalities and in complex mission scenarios was also pursued.

The Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, aerial team general Alberto Rosso, visited the Italian contingent on the occasion of the Distinguished Visitors Day: "The training return for our crews was very high" stated on the occasion "but most of all this exercise demonstrates the logistics capacity of projection of the Italian Air Force. The F-35 have in fact, in a very short space of time, directly deployed from Iceland (where they worked at the service of NATO to protect the space airplane of the Atlantic Alliance) thanks to the high level of professionalism reached by the maintenance team and the effectiveness of the logistics component. We operate best even in adverse weather conditions and thousands of km from the "home base".

Participation in the BF19 exercise offered the Air Force the opportunity to operate in a complex and highly qualifying training context because it was conducted with countries that boast excellence in the field of air defense, thus contributing to maintaining a high level of interoperability and international cooperation.