On Apr. 18, a Kuwaitian C-130 UK-bound, coming from Athens and crossing the Italian airspace was intercepted by two F-16s of the 5th Stormo. The Italian fighters took off from Cervia, intercepted the “zombie” over PNZ (Ponza) radiobeacon at 08.45L, identified it and escorted it until the boundaries of the Italian airspace.
On some forums and mailing lists, commenting a previous Scramble, people wondered why an aircraft flying througn multiple NATO countries was intercepted intercepted and escorted only from Italy.
As I’ve explained a FPL must contain a diplomatic clearance to cross some countries’ airspaces. The diplo clearance is issued by each country individually so a flight can have a valid one to cross a
country and an expired one to cross another one. At least in Italy, if a flight has no diplo clearance, the QRA (Quick Reaction Alert) will be scrambled to visually identify the traffic. That’s why scambles are not at all rare things.
The VIP / Media Day held on Apr 17 at Decimommanu airbase was the final act of the Exercise Spring Flag. The final press conference provided lots of interesting details (that will be discussed in the next days in a dedicated post); one of the most important deals with the weather conditions that affected flight operations during the whole duration of the Exercise. Sardinia island (and most of Italy) was interested by cloudy weather that had a significant impact on the planned sorties.
Just to have an idea of the rate of cancellations let’s have a look at some figures: the Coalition forces, based in Deci flew 212 out 373 missions, the 63% of the planned sorties. The Opfor based in Trapani were less affected by the meteorological conditions and flew 119 sorties out of 137 planned, the 87%. Even for this reason, one of the Exercise’s lessons learned is that next year the Spring Flag could take place a little later, most probably in May.
I think the pictures in this post, taken by Alessandro Fucito, are particularly interesting. They show a layer of sand dust on the upper surfaces of the aircraft taking off from Deci on Apr 11. The night before, the airport was interested by a storm coming from Northern Africa that brought rain and sand from the Sahara Desert on the aircraft parked along the main apron between the Nelly West and Sally West taxiway.
The second week of the Ex. Spring Flag has begun on Apr 14. The scenario is always the same and the main difference with the first part of the Exercise is that from Apr 14 to 16, night missions have been scheduled for both the Coalition and Opfor assets. The SF08 will formally end after the Media Day that will be held on Apr 17 even if the last operative missions was flown on Apr 16 night. From Apr 18, the aircraft will begin redeploying to their homebases even if some assets (all but 2 51 St AMX and the Ala 46 Hornets) have already returned at the end of the first week and did not take part to the night phase.
The following pictures were taken at Decimomannu during the first week by Giovanni Maduli.
More pictures about the first week of the Spring Flag 2008 taken by the correspondent Giovanni Maduli.
To have an idea of the air operations taking place during a SF exercise just think that on Apr 9, between 0600Z and 1122Z 25 missions (46 aircraft) departed from Decimomannu airbase for the morning sorties.
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