On Monday, July 4, the first phase IV course reserved for military pilots, the Italian Air Force and foreign partners, including Qatar and Singapore, destined to be used on “fighter” aircraft, began on the Decimomannu air base.
The Commander of the Schools of the A.M.\3^ R.A., General of the air team Silvano Frigerio, has in fact inaugurated with the symbolic cutting of the ribbon the start of the educational activities that will be entrusted to the newly established 212th Flight Group / IFTS of the 61st Wing of Galatina, for a few days located on the Sardinian base.
The event represents a further step towards the full operation of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) on the Decimomannu airport grounds in compliance with the Technical Agreement, the agreement signed in July 2018 by the Italian Air Force and the Leonardo company with the aim of putting together two national excellences to create synergy for the benefit of the entire country: the expertise of the Arma Azzurra in the field of military flight training and the resources of the main Italian industrial reality of the “Security and Defense” sector.
The result was also possible thanks to the extraordinary effort made by the Infrastructure Service of the Logistics Command which, pending the completion of the “citadel” that will host instructors, visitors, technical staff and equipment, has made available, in a very short time, a series of structures able to allow the Air Force to start training activities on Sardinian soil in compliance with what was planned in the agreement signed with Leonardo.
The IFTS aims to consolidate the process of growth and internationalization of the Air Force flight training sector, increasing the range of courses available to foreign countries, in order to meet the growing demand for advanced training from allied and partner countries. The project, based mainly on the provision of phase IV courses, attended by pilots for 4th and 5th generation combat aircraft, such as the Eurofighter or the F-35, provides, in order to reach the full potential of the training offer, a progressive growth of the Galatina Flight School through expansion on the Sardinian Base.
At full operational capacity, the IFTS, in addition to offering an extremely elastic syllabus , as it is based on several modules, and therefore better adaptable to the varied needs of the different Air Forces, will be able to double the number of phase IV visitors trained in a year, bringing them from the current 30-40 up to about 80.
The initiative will see, for the first time, working together military instructors of the Italian Air Force and Leonardo’s civilians, within the Integrated Training System (ITS) based on the T-346A aircraft: an integrated platform in which the ground sector (simulators and ground learning systems) is one with the aircraft itself, allowing to optimize and make training activities more cost-effective.
It is also a historic moment for the base of Decimomannu that returns to grow, regaining an international connotation and adding a new very important reality with permanent fixed-wing structures to support. For General Frigerio “from the collaboration between the Air Force and Leonardo is born the most modern and advanced integrated flight training system among those present in Western countries.
The International Flight Training School is a virtuous example of national institutional and industrial synergy able to meet the growing demand of the Air Force and partner countries for the advanced training of its pilots. The training of the seafaring staff is the result of a training process that, thanks to a perfect combination of professional skills and cutting-edge technological systems, represents a niche of excellence