You don’t happen to see combat helicopters and jets operating in the magnificent setting of the Dolomites too often.
Cinque Torri (5 Towers) is the name of a mountain complex part of the Dolomites, in northern Italy. Named after the mountain range is also an yearly, large, joint multinational exercise that this year took place on Jul. 4: “5 Torri 2018”.
The Army Alpine Troops, military from 14 allied and friendly countries, assets belonging to the Italian Army Aviation as well as all national Armed Forces and personnel from the Alpine and Speleological Rescue National Corps and Civil Protection took part in the alpine exercise whose aim is to conduct simulated combat in the mountains, apply mountaineering techniques to carry out movement and high-altitude rescue operations, and to show the Alpine Troops’ ability to develop effectively the modern “mountain warfare” concept, an evolution of the traditional high altitude combat techniques.
On the very same mountain tops, where the Italian Artillery Command was located 100 years ago, the Italian mountain soldiers wrote some epic pages of military history during WWI using tactics similar to those used today. Indeed, in a four-dimensional battlefield that includes cyberspace, alpine combat is far from being obsolete, as the operations in Afghanistan have shown.
“A traditional as well as modern exercise, that has engaged our Armed Forces and those of 14 allied and friendly countries who have trained all together in order to be able to intervene in all climate and environmental circumstances. Most of the earth’s land surface is made up by mountains, and most current operations take place in mountain areas”, Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Graziano stated in his welcome speech.
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The exercise included several tactical events (SAR, troops infilitration and exfiltration, transportation and escort etc.) and saw the involvement, among the others of Italian Army CH-47F, NH-90 (UH-90), AB-205 (UH-205) and A-129 (AH-129) helicopters as well as Italian Air Force AMX (A-11B) jets and an NH-500 (TH-500A) helicopter.
The Aviationist’s contributor Claudio Tramontin took the amazing photographs you can find in this article.
