18/06/2015 - Yesterday afternoon, during a patrol flight, two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from Task Force Air (TFA) intercepted an unidentified aircraft flying over the Baltic airspace near Latvia.
The scramble alarm was launched by the NATO Air Operations Command and Control Center (CAOC) based in Uedem in Germany: the aircraft, belonging to the Russian Federation, was traveling off the coasts of the Baltic countries without a flight plan or radio contact with traffic authorities.
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 Alliance skies in order to guarantee their safety. In a few minutes the pilots of the Air Force 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 the activities of Interim Air Policing in all 4 areas of the Alliance that have requested it (Slovenia, Albania, Iceland and the Baltic Republics). The Italian pilots dislocated at the base of Šiauliai were the first and for now the only ones to obtain the maximum efficiency result at the conclusion of an inspection visit aimed at evaluating the efficiency of the forces deployed in the mission Baltic Air Policing. This is the first time since the mission established within the area of responsibility of the NATO Allied Command Operation (ACO) in Brussels (Belgium) was established.
Source: Šiauliai, Lithuania - c