This adds another fundamental element to the program aimed at introducing the new "aeronautical trainer" into the armed force training system. The two newly qualified instructors represent the initial core of the team that will take care of training pilots, Italian and foreign, for fifth generation aircraft. The "machine passage" was carried out with the commander Giacomo Iannelli, pilot "test pilot" of Alenia Aermacchi. The course developed in a number of simulator and in-flight missions, the latter both in the front and rear seats. The actual authorization to carry out the instructional activity on the new aircraft will be issued by the command of the military air force schools.
The T-346A aircraft, of Italian manufacture (Alenia / Aermacchi), which will shortly be assigned to the 61st wing, represents one of the tools through which the transformation of the training system of armed force is taking place, made necessary to optimize the increasingly scarce resources available. In particular, with regard to phase IV of flight training, the new aircraft will allow the download of a substantial number of flight hours, from the activities of the Operational Conversion Units (OCU) to the educational activities carried out at the Galatina base, with a savings in economic terms and machine wear are certainly not indifferent. In other words, the potential and technology of the T-346A will make it possible to migrate to the Salento flight school of a whole series of activities that are currently carried out in the OCU on machines with the highest operating cost and which will allow visitors intended for front-line fighters, to familiarize themselves, already through the training system, with methods, techniques and procedures so far approached directly on aerotactic aircraft. In fact, it cannot be overlooked that the T-346A, like all trainers of the latest conception, is not an aircraft in its own right but is included in an integrated package (we are talking about ITS Integrated Training System) which also includes theoretical instruction, simulators and briefing and debrifing planning systems; at the military airport of Galatina a whole series of structures have already been completed for some time, which see flight simulators as valuable pieces.
For the Galatina airport, the imminent arrival of the new trainer is an attraction, but above all an opportunity: the 61st flock, increasingly involved in a complex process of renewal and modernization of all the structures (not only those directly related to flight activities), it will thus be able to continue to present a top-level training offer and consolidate the role of Lead Nation in the internationalization project of the military flight training sector. This project sees in the Salento aeronautical department, both for its traditional and solid vocation, and for the skills currently expressed and recognized also abroad, the key element to achieve a competitive position vis-à-vis other nations. Currently in Galatina students are being trained from Austria, Greece, Singapore and Kuwait.
The 2014 is the year of the T-346A: the bond between the “F. Cesari ”and the Aermacchi, a combination that has been going on for over 50 years and that has seen many students, both Italian and foreign, train and become“ military pilots ”first on the MB326, assigned to the flight school in the 1962, then on the MB339 which in the Alpha version started its activity in Galatina in 1982, and in that CD, in 1997.
Source: 61 ° Stormo - Galatina (LE) - cap. Angelo Guerrieri
