For Italy, development of a flexible, integrated air force doesn’t necessarily depend on air vehicles and weaponry, but on a modeling and simulation environment that helps build a structure for interoperability.

“The Italian Air Force strongly believes that simulation shall assume the role of a robust basic framework to conduct studies, analysis, experiments and trials in order to reach a useful fusion of C2, networks, computers, geospatial data and images that, by focusing on decision-centric operations, will allow warfighters to fully exploit the global decision environment and enhance doctrines, procedures, techniques and tactics employed in complex operations,” said Lt. Gen. Vincenzo Camporini, who commands the Italian Air Force.

Camporini’s remarks

“The actual objective is to develop an infrastructure that could support decision makers in the procurement phase and operational sites in the employment of new systems and technologies both for training purposes and for operational reasons.”

Camporini said his service wants to quickly acquire modeling and simulation (M&S) gear in four areas: air and ballistic missile defense; operational planning, tasking and evaluation; operational training and mission rehearsal in distributed environments; and coalition operations and crisis response.

Camporini’s presentation

Simulators should offer realistic scenarios in service, joint and combined operations, he said. Modeling should be used during the development of weapons to lower the risk of cost or schedule overruns and to reduce lifecycle costs. Both could be used to help new or existing systems work under the Battle Management Command Control and Communication Computers Intelligence (BMC4I) system.

“The key concept in the Air Force M&S vision is a joint synthetic battlespace — an integrated and fused M&S environment — connecting analysis and training, and tying together many types of models and simulations with different kinds of operators,” Camporini said Nov. 10 at the 3rd Biennial Defense News Middle East Air Chiefs Conference, just before the Dubai air show.

“The simulations extend from high-level aggregate models to detailed engineering models, [and] from pilots in live aircraft and simulators to hardware components and laboratory test beds.”

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