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The Commander of CAOC Torrejón visits the Tigru Detachment

In Schitu (Romania)
August 9, 2024
  • Lieutenant General Sánchez de Lara, together with a delegation of the Romanian Air Force, visits the facilities of Schitu barracks.

The Commander of the Combined Air Operations Centre Torrejón (CAOC-TJ), Lieutenant General Juan Pablo Sánchez de Lara, has visited the Tigru Tactical Air Detachment in Schitu, Romania. This official visit does not only reassert the strong alliance between Spain and Romania within the NATO’s framework, but also highlights the importance in terms of strategy of NATO’s enhanced Air Policing mission in the region.

Lieutenant General Sánchez de Lara was welcomed by the Commander of the detachment, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Conde Granado, who outlined the mission’s objectives and achievements, the available capabilities and the unit’s structure, as well as providing a global perspective of the operation and maintenance of equipment and critical systems for the operation.

Afterwards, the Lieutenant General and the rest of the delegation visited the different work areas of the detachment, where he was able to hold a conversation with the military personnel in charge of the capabilities and particularities of each of them.

During his stay, the CAOC-TJ Commander stressed the key role of the detachment in the airspace surveillance, in his words, “a task that has been proved vital for the defence and integrity of the Atlantic Alliance.”

The Tigru Detachment, made up of military personnel from a wide range of units of the Spanish Air and Space Force, celebrates its 22 months of continuous operations, during which the radar has summed up more than 14,000 flight hours, under the operational control of the Operations Command. This milestone reflects the unwavering commitment of the detachment’s members to the mission of preserving the security of airspace, and thus contributing to a safer and more secure Europe.

The enhanced Air Policing mission (eAP)

The enhanced Air Policing mission (eAP) is part of the Alliance’s collective effort for airspace surveillance of its members, in particular those in the southern area of application, such as Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. The allied deployment in southeastern Europe is conducted under the NATO’s command within the framework of the allied collective defence.

When allied radars pick up an aircraft of interest from among the daily 30,000 air movements inside the European airspace, a verification test of the aircraft is carried out in case it does not use its transponder, it is not in radio contact with civilian air traffic control or it has not filed a flight plan.

Were any of the previous events to happen, the runway communicates with one of the two existing NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centres (CAOC). The Commander of the respective CAOC, the CAOC Torrejón in this case, decides whether or not to launch Quick Reaction Alert Interceptor aircrafts with the aim of intercepting and visually identifying the aircraft.

The Spanish Armed Forces are a regular partner of the NATO Air Policing, along with the patrol mission of national airspace under the control of the NATO’s Combined Air Operations Centre Torrejón (CAOC TJ).

Spain contributes to the Bulgaria-Romania eAP with human and material resources. In addition, an Air Defence Unit (UDAA in Spanish) has been deployed in Estonia, and a radar, in Romania, of the Mobile Air Control Group (GRUMOCA in Spanish), with around 40 soldiers in charge of maintaining the equipment’s activity. 

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