17/06/2015 - (Šiauliai) Yesterday afternoon, during a patrol flight, two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from the Task Force Air (TFA) intercepted an aircraft belonging to the Russian Federation that flew over the Baltic airspace.
The interception order was given by NATO's Command and Control Center for Air Operations (CAOC) based in Uedem, Germany.
The Russian aircraft was a patrol boat that traveled off the coast of the Baltic States without a flight plan known to the authorities responsible for controlling airspace.
The alarm of Scramble, taken at the TFA redeployment, is the operational activity consisting in quickly activating a pair of interceptor aircraft in order to reach and identify one or more unknown aircraft that violate the skies of the Alliance in order to guarantee their safety. In a few minutes, the pilots of the Air Force then intercepted and identified the military aircraft, according to the procedures established by NATO.
The Italian Eurofighter are doing this service on Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, from the 1 January 2015 according to the shifts and the modalities established by NATO.
To date, Italy is the only NATO nation that has ensured Interim Air Policing activities in all 4 areas of the Alliance that have requested it (Slovenia, Albania, Iceland and the Baltic Republics). The Italian pilots located at the Šiauliai base were the first and for now the only ones to obtain the maximum efficiency result at the end of an inspection visit aimed at assessing the efficiency of the forces deployed within the Baltic Air Policing mission. This is the first time since the mission carried out in the area of responsibility of the NATO Allied Command Operation (ACO) in Brussels (Belgium) was established.
Source: Šiauliai, Lithuania - c