The Task Group Typhoon has achieved 2,000 FH in less than one year.
Operating within the Task Group Typhoon, four Italian Air Force F-2000A jets are currently deployed to Ahmed Al Jaber airbase, Kuwait, in support of the multinational campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
Since Mar. 26, 2019, the aircraft have replaced the Task Group Black Cats (equipped with AMX A-11 Ghibli) aircraft under the Italian Nation Contingent Comand Air/Task Force Air Kuwait as part of “Prima Parthica” (as the Italian Armed Forces operation is dubbed at national level) that was established on Oct. 17, 2014.
The Typhoons carry out Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance tasks, carrying the RecceLite II pod: they achieved 1,000 FH (flight hours) on Oct. 13, 2019, flying reconnaissance missions on about 3,500 points of interest and more recently, on Mar. 8, 2020, they logged the 2,000th flight hour in less than 12 months since the beginning of the operation.
The achievement was celebrated with a pretty cool “Tetris Challenge“: the first we can remember by the Italian Air Force. As we have already explained here at The Aviationist the challenge is inspired to the “knolling” a term that dates back to 1987, and it involves organizing objects and tools on the floor at right angles, allowing you to see every item clearly in a photograph. This has often been done ahead of travels, by photographers and journalists, collecting all their stuff in the same place to organize the trip. In the last few weeks, Tetris Challenge has become a way to showcase all the pieces of hardware (and personnel) that make up a service or system.
Here’s what the Italian Air Force says about the Typhoon performance in Kuwait:
The Eurofighter aircraft, in all the operational missions carried out from March 26 2019 to today, has proven to be an extremely versatile and reliable weapon system. Thanks to the sophisticated Reccelite II reconnaissance POD, it has collected and distributed an impressive quantity of very high resolution images of the points of interest requested by the Coalition. The Task Group has fine-tuned the tactics, techniques and procedures used both on the ground and in flight to plan and execute missions, analyze and disseminate the data and images collected, highlighting the Eurofighter as a highly effective reconnaissance aircraft for the Coalition, in terms of maneuverability, time spent in the area of operations, recovery altitude and transit speed.
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Along with the Typhoons, the TFA-K (Task Force Air-Kuwait) supports in theater operations of the KC-767A transport and tanker aircraft, as well as the Predator drones that carry out ISR (Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) tasks. Imagery collected by the Italian assets are then processed and fused by the I2MEC (Integrated Italian Multisensor Exploitation Cell).
