Aeronuatica Militare 32 Stormo Amendola Air Base "100 years 2023"

 Amendola Air Base Northeast of Foggia Italy is home to 32 Stormo (Wing) and it's MQ-9A drones of 28 Gruppo (Squadron) and 5th generation F-35A "Lightning II" attack stealth aircraft of 13 Gruppo. Italy was the first country in Europe to take delivery of it's home built F-35A, although the first 4 aircraft for the Italian Air Force were produced by Lockheed Martin Fort Worth Texas and intially stationed at the F-35A International Training Centre at Luke AFB Arizona for pilot training. On the 3rd December 2015 the first Italian produced Lightning II from the Final Assembly And Check Out (FACO) production facility at Cameri in Northern Italy was delivered to the Aeronuatica Militare. Currently 32 Stormo has 16 aircraft on strength, with two aircraft detached (long term) for pilot training in Arizona, although a 3rd aircraft (32-07) was noted by AviationReporting during May of 2023 at Luke AFB with a special 100 years marked tail. The Aeronuatica Militare is planned to take delivery of 60 F-35A's to be split between Amendola AB and Ghedi AB (6 Stormo), as well as a planned 30 F-35B's some of which arrived in 2022 to the Marina Militare (Navy) at Amendola. The MQ-9A "Predator II" operated by 28 Gruppo, took an initial delivery in 2010 of 6 Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) as they are known, but the fleet now stands at 5 due to arrition. The MQ-9A normally performs local survilence only sorties over Italy and it's coastline and can stay airborne for very long periods of time, we spoke with a female RPA operator who showed us how the MQ-9A was operated and all of the control panels, The operator will not fly the RPA for more than 2.5 hrs without taking a break and swapping over pilots. The missions for NATO of the MQ-9A remain classified.

Due to many photographic restrictions on our media visit only a single F-35A and single MQ-9A could be photographed (hence the lack of photo content in this article) but we were allowed to photograph freely the historical aircraft park on base.

Special thanks must go to 32 Stormo PAO team for hosting our visit, Aeronuatica Militare HQ Rome, Defence Attache UK Rome and Paolo Di Biaggio for organising the visit.

Author Mark Forest

Photography David ilott and David Yarnell