Ship left yesterday Cavour to Norfolk, in the United States for the campaign named Ready For Operation. The flagship unit of the Navy, commanded by the captain of the vessel Giancarlo Ciappina and with on board a crew of about 600 between officers, non-commissioned officers, graduates and volunteers in fixed station, men and women from all over Italy, has given up moorings from Taranto on January 28 to carry out training activities in the Ionian Sea.
Today he received the greeting of the Minister of Defense, Hon. Lorenzo Guerini, accompanied by the Chief of Defense Staff, gen. Enzo Vecciarelli, the chief of staff of the Navy, adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, and the commander in chief of the naval team, adm. Paolo Treu.
It will now head to the Strait of Gibraltar, then to the US naval base in Virginia, on the Atlantic coast, where it will be certified for the use of F-35Bs.
This is a key event for the present and the future of the Armed Force, as outlined by the adm. Cavo Dragone in its guidelines for 2021: "A strategic enterprise for the country, which in the first half of the year will lead to the certification for use by the ship of the new F35-B of the Navy aimed, in compliance with the directives of the Minister of Defense, to achieve initial operational capacity by 2024 'of the aircraft carrier with 5th generation aircraft, which will have to be joined by the more specific amalgamating one with the entire maritime force ".
An event to which Nave Cavour has been preparing for two years, from its entry into the dock, in Taranto, in 2019, for the modernization and adaptation works, which lasted until May 2020, useful for the important and complex generational leap that the F-35B requires and for the which the Navy, in accordance with the directives of the Minister of Defense, is making efforts to ensure the operation of the maritime instrument, in full cooperation "with the aircraft carrier groups of the US Navy and the United Kingdom and French navies" reiterates Admiral Cavo Dragone. It also stresses how "these commitments, with a very high technical-operational content" are "fundamental to strengthen the peculiar expeditionary potential enabling the entire national military instrument".
The "Ready For Operations (RFO)", as Nave's campaign in the United States was called Cavour, will ensure, with the delivery to the Navy of the first JSF aircraft in the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B variant, which will progressively replace the AV-8B Plus, the renewal of capacity of the aircraft carrier, pride of the Navy, of the Defense and of the country. This is an obligatory change of pace, after thirty years of use of an extraordinary aircraft such as the AV-8B, but which is beginning to be inadequate for the most modern and challenging scenarios of use, more and more advanced and more high risk for the safety of our pilots as well as for the naval forces or for the amphibious / land troops to be defended.
The new F-35B aircraft, state of the art in the aeronautical and aeronaval panorama of the most modern Armed Forces, will project the Navy into the group of the very few equipped with 5th generation carrying capacity (at the moment, together with those of the USA and UK and, in the future, also of Japan. This prerogative will allow a technological advantage and capability of absolute pre-eminence. In fact, the 5th generation aircraft, compared to their predecessors, are built with very low observability characteristics (stealth), which entail a marked advantage both The JSF also offers a decisive simplification of the conduct of the aircraft which, combined with a very advanced suite of sensors and communication, allows the pilot to devote himself mainly to the achievement of mission objectives.
The renewal of the capacity of the aircraft carrier, for a country with a strong maritime connotation, such as Italy, will allow to maximize the ability to protect the vital maritime interests of the country, with greater versatility, effectiveness and also at considerable distances from the motherland, or wherever national and international interests may be at risk.
During the RFO Campaign, along the US coasts, the crews and teams of testers and engineers of the Integrated Test Force (ITF) of the multinational program JSF, will verify the compatibility and integration of the new aircraft on board the aircraft carrier, using all the subsystems and sensors of the Unit, updated for this purpose during the aforementioned pre-campaign works, and verifying all the weather-environmental conditions which, for each type of mission assigned to the aircraft, will allow to fully exploit its capabilities, in full safety.
The preparation for departure in the USA in addition to the usual activities (such as, for example, training, replenishment of stocks, boarding of materials and spare parts), due to the Covid-19 pandemic has required all to be adopted the necessary precautions as well as the specific protocols, provided by the Navy to protect the safety of the personnel employed on board the units of the naval team.
