On the afternoon of the 26 October, in a training area in the air space above the Tyrrhenian Sea, the first in-flight refueling of an AWACS aircraft of the French Armée de l'Air by a KC-767A of the Air Force.
The KC-767A of the 14 ° Stormo, which took off from the airport of Pratica di Mare (Rome), completed the operation ordered and coordinated by ITA JFAC, as part of the LIVEX phase of the Trident Juncture 2015 exercise, the largest joint NATO exercise of the last decade, carried out mainly in Italy, Spain and Portugal.
The refueling took place with the so-called "boom" system, that is through a rigid probe with which the refueler (tanker) transfers the fuel to the refueled aircraft (receiver). This capacity is the result of a vast testing campaign completed successfully last November by the Experimental Flight Department, leader in the specific sector, which included compatibility assessments in the combinations of altitude, speed and configuration of the receiving aircraft in a progressive manner towards the most critical conditions.
This operation demonstrates the level of preparation achieved by the Air Force in a strategic capacity - that of theAir-to-Air Refueling - that the armed force has strongly wanted and developed as a "force multiplier" and that only a few countries possess at these levels.
The refueling of the AWACS is also a further step forward in the sign of the standardization and interoperability that the Air Force aims at, in consideration of the increasingly international character of the operations and with a view to optimizing resources. A path that always requires a greater exchange and an ever increasing sharing of assets, knowledge and resources.
The KC-767 is a Tanker / Transport aircraft derived from the Boeing 767-200 Extended Range commercial aircraft. It is able to guarantee, in national airspace as well as in operational theaters where it is currently deployed, a high flight and load autonomy combined with in-flight refueling capacity, such as receiver or as Thoughts. Its refueling capacity can be realized through the boom system or by using the wing pods with baskets (probe and drogue).
During the simulated phase (CPX) of TRJE15, which ended last 16 October, the Italian JFAC successfully concluded all NATO certification activities, such as air component control is preferably used for NATO Responce Force (NRF) 2016.
