AEROMEDIA

Aeromedia
corso Giambone 46/18
10135 Torino (Italy)

Future Military Air Transport in Italy

In order to fulfil the current and future transport requirements of the Italian Air Force, financial plans are under scrutiny to mantain and possibly to increase the overall capacity and range of the IAF transport element, mainly formed by the 46th Air Brigade based at the Pisa/San Giusto air base.
After the Fairchild C-119 "Flying Boxcar" era, lasted in Italy from 1953 to 1974, the 46th Brigade received, from 1973 on, sixteen Lockheed C-130H Hercules e, from 1978 on, the major part of the fourty-four Aeritalia (now Alenia) G 222s bought by the IAF.
Twelve reworked C-130Hs are still in service today with the IAF and they will be withdrawn within 2015; twenty of the remaining G 222s will be reworked and updated in order to remain operational well inside the first decade of the new century.
An order for eighteen Lockheed Martin C-130Js is close to be finalized (the Hercules II had its first flight on 5th April 1996). Due to the fact that an IAF requirement exists to put in service four C-130J AEWs, the total number of C-130Js to be ordered may rise to twenty-two. The consequent industrial set-off has been finalized by an agreement signed in February 1996 by Lockheed Martin and Alenia, comprising industrial activity in Italy for the production of the C-130J and a joint programme for the development and marketing of a new version of the G 222, dubbed C-27J, equipped with digital avionics and powered by two Allison AE2100D3s, the same basic engines of the C-130J, driving six-blade composite propellers.
Twenty more transport aircraft are needed to mantain the present operational level from 2015 on. If the FLA (Future Large Aircraft) European programme, in which Italy is involved, will not materialize, more C-130Js or a combination of C-130Js and C-27Js may be the solution for the IAF.

In the pictures: the Alenia G 222 demonstrator aircraft I-CERX performing high-speed taxi runs at Torino/Caselle in December 1996
the Lockheed-Martin C-130H 46-13 of the IAF's 46th Air Brigade in action during Operation Alba in Albania in June 1996
IAF's Fairchild C-119J "Flying Boxcar" 46-50 MM51-8121, c/n 124, at Torino/Caselle in February 1973

(Aeromedia, June 1997)