At 1500 on 30 June 2016, the final wave of aircraft from the European Air Transport Training (EATT) in Beja in Portugal took off as a ten aircraft package, to deliver tactical cargo and paratroopers as part of a simulated Composite Air Operation (COMAO). For the last two weeks, twenty crews from Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom have trained, shared their experience, learned from each other and finally brought all of the different academic and practical training modules together into this complex COMAO mission, encompassing five different airlift platforms and supported by F-16s from the host nation.
Colonel Jim Kolm, the Deputy Director of EATT2016, commented on the flying event, “I am delighted with the conduct of the training and the excellent support we have received from the staff here in Beja. The annual EATT offers a unique and very realistic opportunity to train in both a multinational and a joint environment and we work hard to ensure it is beneficial to all of the contributing elements such as the paratroopers, ground engineers, Combined Air Terminal Operations (CATO) team, and aeromedical team as well as the aircrews themselves.”
EATT2016 has been a great success with almost 200 hours flown, around 90% of the training objectives completed and offering a unique opportunity to plan and execute missions in a truly multinational framework. The EATT finds its origin in a wider multinational framework: the 20-nation, European Air Transport Fleet (EATF) programme, which sponsors several other airlift activities and underlines the critical importance of Pooling and Sharing capabilities as a means to improve cooperation in European defence.
More information: