Defense Minister Guido Crosetto 's decree has arrived, and Sardinia's firing ranges are preparing to host months of exercises by the Italian and allied armed forces. And mobilization has already begun: in recent days, tanks and armored vehicles have landed at the port of Cagliari. And for days, convoys of Army trucks, escorted by the Carabinieri, have been shuttling between the docks and the Teulada firing range, parading along State Roads 130, 126, and SP2.
The "non-belligerence" period expires on September 30th: until that date, according to the State-Region agreement, all live fire activities at Capo Teulada, Quirra-Perdasdefogu, and Capo Frasca are suspended. In fact, for the coming summer, the President of the Region, Alessandra Todde, granted an exemption to Leonardo Spa, Italy's leading arms manufacturer, which was able to conduct tests in the middle of August in the Sarrabus area. But for the rest of the season, the weapons remained silent.
They are now preparing to reopen fire during training activities which, especially due to signals coming from the Russian-Ukrainian front, are considered increasingly necessary by the highest levels of the Defense.
In June, the Joint Committee on Military Easements rejected the Ministry's proposed schedule of exercises for the second half of the year. This was a position taken by the body's civilian component, dissatisfied with a long list of unanswered requests, from compensation for overburdened municipalities to the lack of transparency regarding activities carried out in the island's military areas.
The list of operations for the upcoming autumn was not even complete: it has already been announced that, in agreement with NATO allies, other exercises will be proposed that had yet to be defined in June.
Meanwhile, Comipa's rejection has been overcome: as required by the military code, the Defense Minister's decree approving the exercises in Sardinia was issued, justified, as always, by "preeminent" national interests.