Aviano Air Force Base – 21 May 2021

From 13 to the 21 The Astral Knight exercise took place in the skies of the Adriatic Sea in May 2021.
Astral Knight 2021 is a joint multinational exercise involving aviators, soldiers and sailors of Albania, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Slovenia and the United States.

The integrated air and missile defense exercise focused on the defense of the ground and lThe training involved a combination of flight operations and computer-assisted scenarios.

The maneuvers were attended by F-15E Strike Eagle, F 16 Fighting Falcon e HH-60 Pave Hawk della US Air Force; F 35A Lightning II of the Italian Air Force; F-16 Fighting Falcon and Emb-145 Erieye of the Hellenic Air Force; MiG-21 BisD / UMD croati.

This event aims to improve command and control integration, the coordination and interoperability of airborne capabilities, land and sea and overlap operations in the integrated air and missile defense company.

Naturally, the Aviano base was one of the busiest with the 31st Fighter Wing aircraft stationed there. I 2 Fighter Squadron residents (il 510th “Fightin’ Buzzards” e il 555th “Triple Nickel”) have engaged the full potential of their F 16CGs.
Finally the global pandemic is loosening its grip a bit and this has allowed us, on the last day of operations, to post outside the networks of the large USAF base.
In this way, we were able to resume take-off and landing operations of the airplanes participating in the exercise.
The Vipers were almost all equipped with 2 AMRAAM all tips, 1 single AIM 9X to the right external pylon and an ACMI pod to the left, Cortina 2 tanks subalari. They also had 1 ALQ 131 ventral and the Sniper pod to the right of the air intake. At least 1 specimen flew with the ALQ pod 167 instead of the ALQ 131.
During the day they also made an appearance 3 HH-60G Pave Hawk del 56th Rescue Squadron residente, 1 C 130J Hercules di Ramstein, 2 F 35A of the Italian Air Force (including the special color 32-13 with the new eagle that adorns the right drift) and, particularly appreciated, a C 130H Hercules of the Royal Air Forces of Morocco in his elegant livery a 2 sand tones.

The weather unfortunately, while sunny, it wasn't much, with heavy veiling that strongly affected the exposure of the cameras. The blazing sun and the prevailing gray of the liveries of almost all the subjects certainly did not help.
Eventually, however, a great day: see finally, in few hours, 17 F 16, 2 F 35, 2 C 130 and 3 HH 60 just lifts morale. We hope that in the near future these experiences can multiply.

To you photos