Tomorrow will formally take place the passage of a large part of the fleet of transport aircraft, in-flight refueling and medical evacuation of the Italian Air Force under the operational control of the European Air Transport Command (European Air Transport Command - EATC), the multinational command that from the 2010 manages and uses the aircraft made available by the countries that adhere to this European initiative.
Italy's entry into the EATC officially took place on December 4 following the signing by the Chief of Staff of the Italian Air Force, in the presence of Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti, of the document that sanctioned the adhesion of the Italy to the agreement involving France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain.
The Air Force will carry out the "transfer of authority" to the EATC of 31 aircraft between C-27J, C-130J and KC 767, belonging to the 46 ^ Pisa air brigade and to the 14 ° Wing of Pratica di Mare, dependent on the Support and Special Forces Command, with the possibility of summarizing the control of the aircraft, should it be necessary for national needs, thanks to the envisaged mechanism for revoking the transfer of authority (Revoke Transfer of Authority).
The European Air Transport Command, located in Eindhoven (NL), can be seen as part of the Common Security and Defense Policy and represents an unprecedented reference model, because it allows the concept of 'pooling & sharing' to be applied to the military air transport sector. This concept was created with the aim of improving and optimizing the management of available resources, thanks to the standardization of procedures and the use of a common fleet larger than those of the individual countries, allowing considerable savings also on the financial front.
The Italian adhesion to the EATC represents a tangible result that enhances the capabilities of military air transport and refueling in domestic flight - in particular those of excellence - such as high-level bio-containment transport - "transforming" them into credits payable with carriers of other participating European nations. All this ensures greater operational flexibility and cost containment, reducing the need to resort to theoutsourcing through for example commercial aircraft in cases of unavailability of suitable national carriers.
It will therefore be possible to access transport capacity oversize (ie exceptional loads), to ensure greater correspondence between the type of aircraft and the characteristics of the transport request, with a substantial improvement in the cost-effectiveness ratio in the entire sector.
