Sergio Scandura is a journalist at Radio Radicale who monitors air routes and thus discovers important news such as the State flight for the Libyan torturer Al Masri. What do we know about the activity at Sigonella?
First of all, I would avoid emphatic excesses in the narrative and also some daring comparative advertising. Crosetto’s communication, who for one day denied the use of the base to the Americans, is not much comparable to Bettino Craxi’s Sigonella: there is no truck blocking the runway of the base at the foot of Etna.
For one day, a few days ago, the movement of a convoy of tankers, that is refueling aircraft, which were transferring other military assets — therefore fighter-bombers — towards the Middle East was prevented.
Most likely the government is trying to play a balancing card also with respect to the referendum outcome and the significant block of anti-militarist young electorate, but also part of the non-young electorate that does not appreciate these military adventures, if only for the economic effects they produce in daily life, as well as for more intimate and humanitarian reasons related to any war operation.
However, Sigonella remains a central base, still involved in the theater of war. It is the second most important base for the US Navy’s Triton drones, very sophisticated systems.
At Sigonella also operate the P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which can carry anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles, droppable from the belly of the plane to neutralize enemy assets.
The most relevant role, however, is that of the Tritons: ultra-high technology drones, with an autonomy of about 30 hours, employed in continuous surveillance missions from the Mediterranean towards the operational theater.
We tracked them also in the days before the first attack and they are operating mainly in the northern part of the Persian Gulf.
In particular, we have observed them insistently over Kharg Island, considered the main oil export terminal of Iran and thus the financial lung of the Tehran regime.
These aircraft, equipped with very advanced radar, are capable not only of gathering information but also of intercepting adversary radar systems and identifying hostile targets, which can then be struck by other armed assets.
The Tritons are therefore fully part of the operational device.
In light of this, it is difficult to support the distinction evoked by the Prime Minister between kinetic and non-kinetic action: at Sigonella, however one wants to define it, there is direct involvement in the theater of war.
The Tritons arrived at Sigonella around 2024, completing the fleet, and have already been employed in missions in the Black Sea for the defense of Ukraine after the Russian aggression, as well as in the Baltic Sea for surveillance activities, particularly in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Some of these drones also operate along the Libyan coast.
Their geographical centrality, linked to the Sigonella base, inevitably makes them a key tool also in this theater of war.
(Excerpt from Appunti)
