A flight school with 22 M 346 Advanced Jet Trainers aircraft, 40 instructors, 2 full mission simulators, up to 8,000 flight hours a year. And yet the new campus of over 35,000 square meters covered in an area of over 130,000 with over 400 people a year who will gravitate to it, including civil, military and student employees .
A summary of the numbers of the International Flight Training School (IFTS) inaugurated this morning at the military air base of Decimomannu in the presence of the undersecretary of Defense, Matteo Perego di Cremnago, the new CEO of Leonardo, Roberto Cingolani, representatives of the armed forces of the main advanced countries including Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, of the heads of the military authorities, of the regional councilor for General and Personnel Affairs, Andreina Farris, of the mayors of the territory.
The school, born in 2018 and now completed with the construction of all the training facilities, aims to become the international reference for the training of military pilots relating to phase 4 of training , the last, the most advanced , the one that prepares pilots to fly fourth and fifth generation fighters.
A new education and training model , already chosen by twelve foreign countries, including Qatar, Japan, Germany, Singapore, Austria, Canada and Saudi Arabia, an integrated simulation environment where real and virtual merge into a single operational scenario, with playing complex situations of up to 10 aircraft between friendly and enemy forces interacting as if they are all flying in the same sky.
"At the moment we are training about twenty people who are only the embryonic part, when fully operational there will be 56 and from next year we will reach the maximum capacity with 80 future pilots . There have been excess requests and we have had to discard someone at the moment" , Luca Goretti , Chief of Staff of the Air Force explained to journalists on the sidelines of the inauguration ceremony.
There will be a reserve of twenty seats for future Italian pilots, "first of all we have to think about our training," he clarified. "This campus has an added value - underlined Goretti - which is the human one, here many young people from different countries will work together , there will be a continuous exchange of skills, a reality like this does not exist in Europe".
Councilor Farris spoke of the strategic nature of the investment in terms of high technological capabilities, innovation and eco-sustainability. «Today – he recalled – we can finally say, with pride, that Sardinia, with Decimomannu, hosts the most modern and advanced integrated training system among those present in other Western countries, created thanks to the positive synergy between the world of Defence, industry and our region". An "innovative and revolutionary" project, as Farris defined it, who highlighted the positive effects for Sardinia .
(Unioneonline/vl)