After deterioration of relations with Turkey, Israeli and Greek combat planes take part in a military exercise in Greece

November 1, 2012 Military Aviation
David Cenciotti

As explained in “Known and unknown incidents prove Turkey and Israel have come closer to war than you might believe”, an exercise involving the Hellenic Air Force and Israeli Air Force took place between Oct. 21 – 26 at Larissa airbase in Greece. The drills were held as a follow up of last November’s visit of the HAF’s 337 Sq. to Ovda airbase, in the Negev.

Ten double seat IAF F-16I Sufa multirole fighters belonging to the 119 Sqn “Bat” (Ha’ Atalef) [#413, #448, #491], the 201 Sqn “The One” (Ahat) [#857, #868, #880] and 253 Sqn “Negev” (Ha’ Negev) [#407, #445, #476, #478], including 152 pilots and ground crew arrived from Ramon airbase, in Israel.

All the F-16I Sufa (as those possibly taking part to the air strike in Sudan last week…) sported a configuration including the characteristic Conformal Fuel Tanks (CFTs), inert AIM-9L Sidewinder and Litening II and LANTIRN pods.

Greece participated with F-16 Block 52+ and Mirage-2000Mk2 fighter jets from 110, 111 and 114 FW.

Air-to-air, air-to-surface and Composite Air Operations (COMAO) day and night missions were flown during the exercise.

H/T to Strategy Reports for the heads-up

Image credit: HAF

Related Articles
About David Cenciotti
WebsiteFacebookTwitterLinkedIn instagram
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

Related Articles

3 Comments

  1. These continual training exercises and now RAF Typhoons heading for the gulf looks rather ominous

  2. Well, Greece and Israel have held air-warfare exercises for years now. One of the major reasons is that Greece is the only Western operator of Tor M1 tactical air defence systems, similar to those of Iran. Consequently and considering Israels geopolitical situation, its safe to say, that these exercises center on simulations of potential air strikes on Iranian targets under adverse conditions.

    Trying to pull Turkey into the equation (even indirectly, as in the headline) is a wee bit absurd. Turkey not only is a NATO-member, it also has a significant air force and general military capabilities (its navy is arguably the strongest in the eastern med and the air force is large, comprehensive and well trained). I have read your other post and nothing in the events list really suggest running a risk of getting anywhere near a state of war. Particularly the intelligence part on behalf of the Israelis is arguably a “non-war”-approach. The Israelis tend to be fairly brazen sometimes (see their behavior re German warships in support of UNIFIL a few years back) and Turkey seems to be willing to hit them on the nose for that, but its pretty evident that both sides are not at all interested in any kind of escalation.

    As said before, the Greek exercises have nothing to do with this, as evidenced by similar activities in the past, well before the deterioration in T-I relationships.

Comments are closed.