A team of 13 EATC experts has left Eindhoven to fly to Lanzarote for final coordination with their Spanish counterparts and to welcome the 100 participants and their tankers at Lanzarote Air Base. They will spend exciting days on this Spanish island training together air-to-air refuelling procedures in combination with a live fighter exercice called “Ocean Sky”, operating from Gando airbase in Gran Canaria.
The 2021 EART edition offers a number of premières to EATC, EART and the nations: this is the first time EART takes place outside of the Netherlands, in Spain in combination with a Spanish fighter exercice. Then EART 2021 welcomes for the first time the A330 MRTT (MMU* and France). It is also a kick-off for the integration of a (ESP) A400M into EART. Furthermore, Colonel Salvatore Melillo, one of EATC’s highly experienced AAR experts, will be the Director for this edition.
This year, EART will again offer dedicated training opportunities to the tanker crews. The latter will focus on similar and dissimilar “multi-tanker formation” and “tanker-to-tanker” rendezvous procedures. The exercise also emphasizes on threat reactions and retrograde procedures. Finally EATC will organise parallel cross-national maintenance activities. Read more about this exceptional event in one of our next articles!
*multinational MRTT unit