In early December, USAF F-35A Lightning IIs and F-16 Combating Falcons took half in agile airpower workouts throughout the Baltic states and in Romania.
Two F-16s from the U.S. Air Pressure’s thirty first Fighter Wing (FW), based mostly at Aviano Air Base, Italy, launched on Dec. 3, 2025 and flew to Câmpia Turzii Air Base, Romania – residence to Romanian Air Pressure F-16s in addition to MQ-9 Reapers of the USAF’s 731st Expeditionary Assault Squadron, a geographically separated unit underneath the umbrella of Aviano’s thirty first FW. The 2 jets landed on the Romanian base, quickly refueled, and relaunched with help from Romanian forces.
“Our means to combine with our Allies is foundational to our readiness and preparedness to battle collectively,” mentioned U.S. Air Pressure Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa commander. “The threats we face require dynamic, partnered options, and in the present day’s profitable coaching reaffirmed how we are able to generate and maintain decisive air energy throughout the theater.”
The subsequent day, on Dec. 4, two F-35A Lightning IIs from the forty eighth FW at RAF Lakenheath took off in live performance with a KC-135 Stratotanker from RAF Mildenhall. The tanker supported the 2 stealth fighters on a flight to the Baltic states, the place they overflew Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. As well as, the F-35s joined the airfield patterns for low approaches at bases in all three nations – Šiauliai in Lithuania, Lielvārde in Latvia, and Ämari in Estonia.
REAPER01 flight F35’s becoming a member of LAGER 60 to route into Europe through NAVPI. LAGER working mil 133.325 & REAPER on 259.600. A2A is 242.600 pic.twitter.com/tvWO2Y5WXg
— Airband Listening (@Su39frogfoot) December 3, 2025
Hinds once more commented on the deployment, noting “Our means to challenge decisive airpower over the Baltics sends an plain message that we stay prepared to discourage aggression,” including “Our shut coordination with Allies ensures the U.S. is postured to quickly deploy fight energy to defend Europe’s Jap Flank.”
As is common follow, the F-35As depicted in formally launched imagery of the train are proven fitted with Luneberg lens radar reflectors on the higher and decrease fuselage. The radar reflectors permit the plane to be tracked by civilian air visitors management models utilizing major radar, whereas moreover stopping correct intelligence gathering on the plane’s true radar cross-section. Within the weeks following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, some patrols over Jap Europe had been flown by ‘clear’ F-35s with out the radar reflectors, maybe signifying completely different concerns as to the risk stage on the time – although it must also be famous that these had been, in impact, operational defensive counter-air (DCA) missions.
Although the F-35 carries a lot of its weapons internally, making it tougher to analyse their loadouts, the all-external carry F-16s from Aviano might be seen fitted with inert coaching variations of the AIM-120 Superior Medium Vary Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) and AIM-9 Sidewinder.
Most notably, each F-16s launched on the Dec. 3 sortie had been carrying AN/ALQ-131 digital countermeasures (ECM) pods on their centreline hardpoints. The AN/ALQ-131 supplies enhanced self-protection for fighter plane by detecting and, if essential, jamming the emissions of hostile radar websites. Aviano F-16s carried the pod together with reside weapons throughout patrols in 2022. Each the AN/ALQ-131 in addition to the newer AN/ALQ-184 are within the technique of being changed on the F-16 by an internally fitted, and lighter, system often called the AN/ALQ-257 Built-in Viper Digital Warfare Suite (IVEWS).
Agile Fight Employment
The F-16 mission was labeled as an Agile Fight Employment (ACE) train in official releases. The ACE idea has been given a excessive profile in U.S. and Allied forces because it was formally adopted as doctrine in January 2022, and entails sustaining the aptitude to quickly ahead deploy air energy and all required help components to working places that is perhaps in any other case unprepared or much less ready for army operations. Giant, centralised air bases are susceptible to assaults which may floor each plane on the station – dispersing some plane to plenty of ahead working places, subsequently, will increase the survivability of the power.
French Air and House Pressure Brigadier Common Gilles Juventin, talking a multinational NATO airpower symposium in 2023, summarised: “ACE is an operational scheme of manoeuvre designed to enhance resilience and survivability whereas producing air fight energy from each residence bases and geographically dispersed places. ACE may be carried out from Important or Deployed Working Bases and Contingency Places – this requires a versatile, effectively ready and coordinated method by the deploying power and the receiving bases.”
