The agreement that integrates the Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities was signed today at Palazzo Chigi.
After the positive results of the first experimental activities of environmental monitoring with reconnaissance air assets of the Air Force, carried out during the month of May, the Defense has decided to expand the experimentation also to the Remote Piloting Structures (APR) and to enlarge the audience of the beneficiaries to all the signatories of the "Plan of action to combat the burning of waste" started with the memorandum of understanding signed in Caserta last 19 November between the President of the Council, Giuseppe Conte, the representatives of seven Ministries (environment, internal, economic development, defense, health, justice, south) and the Campania Region.
This is the purpose of the Collaboration Agreement signed today by Ing. Fabrizio Curcio, president of the Coordination Unit of the "action plan", and the Air Force General Alberto Rosso, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, through which Air Force operational capabilities and capabilities are added to what has already been provided by the 'Army. Following this important agreement, from today satellites, planes, drones, terrestrial platforms and image data analysts will be able to cooperate in an integrated system that uses the well-known military paradigm, called ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance).
To underline the important agreement were the Undersecretary of State for Defense, Hon. Angelo Tofalo and the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the Hon. Salvatore Micillo.
"Thanks to the Air Force - said the Hon. Tofalo - for the punctuality, the concreteness and the great competence with which it has responded to the request of the political authority, to bring benefit to the territory and to the citizens ".
"A fundamental process is taking place today," the Hon. Micillo - made of shared intelligence to protect the territory and the population. For the first time these technologies are also used for environmental protection ”.
Similar to what happens in the operating theaters where men, women and assets of the Armed Forces are involved, the SRI capabilities offered by the Air Force will contribute to creating also in this context that Information Superiority which makes the task of those on the ground more effective. is called upon to decide in the context of delicate and intense prevention and contrast activities.
The experimentation will last throughout the summer, the most critical for the recurrence and magnitude of the fires. In particular, the Air Force will use training missions, already programmed to maintain its image collection and analysis capabilities (without additional charges for the Armed Forces) and the products processed, therefore, will satisfy the information needs of the actors involved in the plan. contrast to the fires.
The use of aeronautical assets and sensors at national level is not an absolute novelty. The APR Predator have been used with surveillance tasks on the occasion of Major Events (such as, in recent years, the Palermo pro Libya Conference of 2018, the G7 of Taormina and Bari of 2017, the Ventotene Summit of 2016 as well as the Jubilee Extraordinary of the 2015). The AMX, Tornado and F-2000 Eurofighter aircraft, also equipped with state-of-the-art photographic equipment, were used for surveillance and reconnaissance tasks, providing, in a very short time, a clear view from above of what happened, allowing and facilitating the ground crew intervention, as happened during the earthquakes and floods in recent years, in the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa and in the recent eruption of the Stromboli volcano.
The real novelty consists, precisely, in the use of these integrated defense capabilities for environmental monitoring and for the prevention and contrast of illegal and deleterious phenomena for Italian citizens, in full harmony and inter-agency integration of military capabilities and with the definition of utility to the country that is at the center of the Vision and Mission of the Air Force.