The motto "Train as you operate and operate as you train!" (Training as you work and work as you train!) Is the basis of the operational concept of the Task Force Air (TFA) of Siauliai to ensure, both day and night, the pursuit of the objectives assigned by the "Baltic Border" Operation, ie contributing to the NATO "Baltic Air Policing" operation, for the surveillance of Allied airspace on the Baltic.
Every day, in fact, the TFA Eurofighter "Typhoon" take off for training missions (so-called "Tango-Scrambe"), to keep pilots, specialists and the entire operational and logistic support system at the highest possible level of training. , necessary to be fully efficient and effective in the event of a real interception mission (called "Alpha-Scramble"), as has happened several times during Baltic Air Policing.
On days 13 and 14 August a KC767A aircraft of the Air Force deployed to the Baltics to perform refueling missions in flight in favor of the 4 Eurofighter of the TFA Siauliai. The pilots were thus able to extend the training also to the peculiar form of flight of the air supply and to long patrol and interception missions, using the refueling in flight to extend the coverage of the Baltic area up to about 4 hours per flight.
The scramble is a fundamental operational activity of Air Defense, with which a pair of interceptor fighters is quickly taken off, following an alarm received from the command and control chain of NATO's Integrated Air Defense system (NATINADS - NATO Integrated Air Defense System), due to a suspected or actual violation of the airspace of competence by unknown aircraft or without the required authorizations.
Within NATO, components equipped with H24, 7 days on 7 (such as Siauliai's TFA) piloted interceptors are defined Quick Reaction Alert Assets for Intercepts (QRA-I, rapid reaction assets on interception alarm).
These missions are a tangible demonstration of how air power is understood and expressed by the Air Force. With its air assets, in fact, the AM takes on an "autonomous" strategic value in achieving the assigned objectives directly with speed, flexibility and ample freedom of action, ensuring a constant "virtual presence", since it is able, in a very short time , to be deployed. All this is expressed through autonomous aerial activities or combined with other forces.
Since 1 January 2015, Siauliai's TFA, has contributed to the NATO operation "Baltic Air Policing" with four Eurofighter 2000 "Typhoon" fighters, ensuring the air defense of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, member countries of the Alliance that cannot provide for this task with its own forces.
Italy participates continuously in these operations also in the skies of Slovenia from 2004 and Albania from the 2009, while it has already been engaged in Iceland in the 2013. With the contribution provided by the "Baltic Frontier" Operation, Italy is the only nation in the Alliance that currently participated in all four NATO "Air Policing Operations".
