The picture reveals Italy’s STOVL stealth fighters inside Pantelleria’s cavernous wartime plane shelter, a large reinforced-concrete construction constructed into the island’s volcanic panorama earlier than World Battle II.
Two F-35B plane, belonging to the 101° Gruppo (Squadron) of the 32° Stormo (Wing), based mostly at Amendola Air Base, deployed to Pantelleria airport, from Apr. 20 to 24, 2026, the Italian Air Drive introduced. The service has been deploying the kind to the Mediterranean island, positioned about 100 km (62 miles) southwest of Sicily and 60 km (37 miles) east of the Tunisian coast, since 2020.
Nonetheless, the newest deployment marked an necessary milestone within the integration course of and within the improvement of the weapon system’s expeditionary functionality.
Actually, in comparison with earlier training-operational missions performed with F-35B plane at Pantelleria airport, the place an plane took off from Amendola and landed on the island for warm pit refueling, instantly taking off once more to finish the mission, the novelty is the deployment of the complete logistics parts serving the system. Actually, a big crew of specialists, appropriately outfitted and with accompanying instrumentation, was deployed on website to permit the system to completely exploit all its capabilities away from its standard dwelling base.
As occurred in 2020, when the service’s first F-35B (MM7453/32-14) deployed to Pantelleria for the primary time as a part of an “Expeditionary” PoC (Proof of Idea), the 2 brief take-off and vertical touchdown STOVL ( Quick Take-Off and Vertical Touchdown) jets have been recovered inside the bottom’s iconic “Nervi Hangar”, a large cavern-like strengthened concrete construction constructed within the late Thirties.
Measuring about 340 meters in size and 26 meters in width, the shelter was designed to guard dozens of Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Drive) plane beneath a parabolic vault camouflaged into the island’s volcanic panorama. It options two entrances and an unique capability reportedly estimated at round 80 plane. Though its identify historically hyperlinks it to Pier Luigi Nervi, newer research have questioned this direct attribution.
Through the years, the hangar has been used to host few Italian belongings (together with MB-339 and Twister plane) throughout brief deployments of assorted Italian Air Drive’s tactical models.
As a part of the imagery launched by the Aeronautica Militare on the finish of the newest deployment, one reveals two F-35Bs contained in the hangar, a picture that brings collectively Italy’s most fashionable plane and one of the iconic protected plane shelters constructed a couple of century in the past, even earlier than World Battle II.
Expeditionary coaching
In keeping with the Italian Air Drive, the late April’s deployment was “a posh and detailed operation that required cautious evaluation and meticulous planning of sorties, involving a wide range of various kinds of belongings, specialised personnel, and the best ranges of logistical capabilities.”
The deployment concerned a number of groups, together with technicians and specialists, assist programs, operational infrastructure setup, upkeep tools provide, and all of the parts essential to make the plane absolutely operational in a context completely different from its standard one. Evidently, logistics performed a key position, and the assist supplied by the Pantelleria Airport Detachment was vital.
Its mission is to offer help to nationwide and worldwide army plane, deployed or in transit, in addition to to make sure the group’s excessive degree of operational effectivity. Certainly, in finishing up their assigned mission, the Detachment’s personnel have been liable for planning, coordinating, and implementing all actions needed to make sure logical and technical-operational assist for the deployed belongings. Particularly, the actions carried out in assist of the thirty second Wing’s crews included the efficiency of operations associated to the pre- and post-flight phases of the deployed plane, involving quite a few members of the Detachment.
The F-35Bs didn’t function alone: they built-in with the Eurofighter Storm plane of the thirty seventh Wing, which operated from their dwelling base at Trapani-Birgi with the aim to refine cooperation and interoperability capabilities between completely different belongings, contributing to elevating the general degree of coaching and operational readiness. Furthermore, the deployment was supported by the C-130J plane of the forty sixth Air Brigade from Pisa.
Coaching actions of this sort allow the event of the NATO Agile Fight Employment (ACE), an operational idea designed to enhance the resilience and survivability of Air Energy, i.e., the flexibility to maneuver from a base and regenerate its air operational functionality in geographically dispersed areas, after which proceed to conduct the assigned mission, i.e., to be resilient and able to producing operational readiness from the air in any circumstance.
For the reason that arrival of the primary F-35B, the Italian Air Drive has began to revive the expeditionary functionality that had been placed on the shelf with actions at Pantelleria and different (roughly) austere airfields. In 2020, the then Italian Air Drive Chief of Employees Lt. Gen. Rosso stated:
“This functionality is extraordinarily necessary to face new eventualities or conditions just like the one we had through the Gulf Battle. Our Twister jets have been deployed to an airbase [Al Dhafra Air Base, UAE] that was distant from the world of operations: this implied that our plane needed to fly a number of hours and perform a number of aerial refuelings earlier than reaching their targets. The power to function from shorter runways can permit the choice of a more in-depth airbase and remedy the issue.
By way of flexibility, simply suppose that in Africa there are about 100 runways which have a size between 2,800 and three,000 meters however there are 20 instances as many runways between 1,000 and 1,500 meters in size. Having the ability to use brief runways lets you multiply your capability to deploy the place wanted, in a extra handy and quicker method, particularly nearer to the world of operation. Having an plane that’s able to taking off from shorter runways permits unimaginable flexibility even in these eventualities which might be presently solely barely conceivable.
In case of battle, plane which might be in a position to function from shorter runways can be dispersed to extend their survivability. This flexibility to function from naked/austere runways and even highways makes the air energy extra unpredictable and represents a basic functionality in any situation.
Because of this, after rigorously learning all of the eventualities and prices, the Italian Air Drive has recognized, as achieved by different air arms, a blended fleet of F-35A and B plane, as probably the most economically handy and efficient configuration.”
Clearly, deploying two jets to a distant airbase doesn’t imply the aptitude is “prepared to be used”; nonetheless, it’s one step towards constructing expertise and studying classes which may turn out to be useful when the necessity to use it for actual arises.
