The Joint Air Warfare Tactical Exercise is organized by the German military to promote multinational training in planning and conducting integrated military operations between air, land and naval forces. The event, whose organization started about a year ago, involves eight different German air bases, over 4500 soldiers from eleven different nations (Germany, Italy, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Holland, Slovenia, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, plus Austria and Switzerland as observers), a NATO Awacs radar aircraft and about a hundred aircraft including fighters, helicopters, transport and refueling aircraft. Also participating in the exercise are two frigates of the German Navy, located in the North Sea, as well as troops, land vehicles and various anti-air defense systems positioned in various points on the territory. "Train as you fight" In the exercise, which will end on the next 23 in May, a NATO-led intervention in the crisis area (CRO - Crisis Response Operation) is simulated, an opportunity for the participating Nations to capitalize on the lessons learned in recent air operations, as well as to improve the level of standardization and interoperability with other allied partners. 
"Thinking about and sharing exercise training objectives with other countries in advance is a fundamental factor and now a successfully applied scheme at the international level," explains the AMX cell leader at the Schleswig-Jagel base. "For the air component, the greatest return is precisely the possibility of increasing integration between the different countries in the conduct of complex air operations, bearing in mind the standards of readiness and effectiveness required by the Atlantic alliance". Among the types of missions carried out, the defense of a portion of airspace (eg for the maintenance of a so-called 'no fly zone'), close support to troops and naval units, the attack and the prohibition of air defenses enemies and targets on the ground, intelligence activities, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR), operations with special or support forces, such as search and recovery of crews in hostile territory.
The AM participation: thirteen aircraft, about two hundred soldiers involved.Four fighters Tornado ECR (Electronic Combat Reconnaissance) of Piacenza's 50 ° Stormo - the version specialized in the discovery and suppression of enemy air defenses of which only the air force and the luftwaffe itself are currently equipped in Europe - and three AMX of the 51 ° Storm of Istrana are deployed in Schleswig-Jagel, a base located in northern Germany, almost on the border with Denmark; on the same basis, the one with the most foreign aircraft deployed, the Finnish F-18, the Greek F-16, the Hungarian Gripen, the Dutch F-16 and the Slovenian PC-9 are also operating. "We live in a time of rapid, sometimes unpredictable changes, and we see how every day new tensions seem to appear on the international chessboard," says the chief of the Tornado ECR stationed in Jagel. "NATO asks us to be ready to intervene quickly and effectively wherever it is deemed necessary and the only way to do this is to train with other countries as realistically as possible." 
A cell of six Eurofighters from the 4 ° flock of Grosseto, from the 36 ° flock of Gioia del Colle and from the 37 ° flock of Trapani Birgi is instead displaced on the basis of Laage, to the north-east, about two hundred kilometers from the border with Poland , one of the Eurofighter bases of the German air force. "In this base we feel at home", tells one of the Italian F2000 pilots. "Same plane, standardized procedures, we work with foreign colleagues as if they were our own flight group: this is the future, less costs and more efficiency". As would happen in reality if it were necessary to deploy the aircraft outside national borders or at least far away from their stationary bases, for each of the three participating flight lines - Tornado, AMX and Eurofighter - the logistic and operational support is assured by personnel technician of the respective departments to which they belong. Also present was a team of the 4 ° technical maintenance department of Borgo Piave (Latina) for the support of tele-communications. Liaison officers of the individual departments are also present at the headquarters of the exercise, in Holzdorf, which in addition to hosting the direction of the event, simulates being the command and control structure that in the scenario of hypothesized intervention would assume the role of the command NATO deputy director of joint air operations. The transfer of technical and material personnel to Germany took place between the 8 and the 9 in May, partly by land and partly by air, with a KC-767 aircraft from the 14 ° flock departing from the Brindisi base. The "re-deployment" in Italy is scheduled from 23 in May with the same modalities.
Source: UGCOM - Public Information Office - Rome - cap. Stefano Testa
