Fortunately, there were no injuries in the accident that occurred yesterday in Australia, where during the Pitch Black ’24 exercise an Italian Eurofighter Typhoon crashed for reasons yet to be ascertained. The pilot saved himself by activating the ejection seat and after landing with the parachute he was recovered in good physical condition and underwent the necessary medical checks.
The Air Force confirmed that there was no damage except for the loss of the airplane. The training activity in the Pacific area continues for our Air Force, an experience that is proving very useful for establishing and testing the procedures for the redeployment of the Armed Forces even in territories very distant from the national one, as well as for the Navy, whose assets are participating in the event that will end on August 2. Last week the Minister of Defense, Guido Crosettoon the exercise had declared: “This is an important and complex training activity with which the Defense wants to test the ability to operate in distant areas, such as the Indo-Pacific, a region that will have an increasingly significant strategic and economic importance, also from a security point of view. And we do it alongside allied nations and regional partners to face common challenges together”.
Pitch Black ’24 is a large-scale event organised by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to which twenty nations have been invited: Italy, Australia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Korea, United Kingdom, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, USA, Brunei, Canada, Fiji, New Zealand.
Our Navy is participating with the Italian Carrier Strike Group (Csg), composed of the aircraft carrier Cavour and the frigate Alpino in an activity that serves to achieve the operational capacity in the open sea of the F-35B aircraft present on board, that is, with fifth-generation flying machines, making Italy the only nation in the European Union able to do so. The ongoing event is also leading to the need to simultaneously deploy defense, attack, mobility, intelligence and security assets. Our contingent is made up of approximately 400 men and women of the Air Force, airplanes and support vehicles, deployed for the first time over 13,000 km from Italy on two RAAF operational bases: in Darwin there are the F-35 (A and B) and Eurofighter fighters in addition to the G550 Caew surveillance and intelligence aircraft, while in the Amberley base (in the East of the country), the KC-767A multi-role tanker is deployed. To carry out this redeployment it was also necessary to use the C-130J of the 46th Air Brigade for oceanic search and rescue activities and for the transport of materials. Finally, with the decision to acquire 24 new Eurofighter aircraft and the start of the procedures to evaluate the purchase of six new tankers, the Air Force is moving towards becoming one of the best prepared and equipped in NATO.
On this last front, the order for our new aerial refuelers should be around 1.4 billion euros, spendable on two different models from which to choose one. Currently, the Air Force is a customer of Boeing, which recently announced the possibility of modernizing, with updates, its Kc-767s, but there would also be the possibility of commissioning the Airbus A-330 Mrrt. Initially, Italy had planned to acquire six new Kc-46 Pegasus (military name of the Kc-767 in variant B), without however exchanging the four examples in variant “A” currently in service. The initial program, decided in November 2022, was then canceled at the end of last month. In any case, these are initiatives that bring Italy ever closer to the goal of raising military spending – but above all operational efficiency – to two percent of national GDP, as requested for years within NATO.
