From the heart of Europe they took flight when dawn was still far away. The wake-up call was sudden in the NATO headquarters, a stone's throw from the Limburg Euroregion, the competing site of SOS Enattos for the construction of the Einstein Telescope. The home air base is nestled on the border between Germany, Belgium and Holland. Here NATO is in charge, even if the barbed wire that surrounds it flies the German flag.
The warning of the missiles
At that time the Iranian attack was about to end in stalemate, as it should have been. Moreover, Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Ayatollahs, had been explicit: we will strike Israel, "only" as a reaction. Shortly before sending a swarm of 150 " kamikaze" drones, the Shahed 137 , a hundred hypersonic Kheibar model ballistic missiles (surface-to-surface) and 36 Paveh 351 type cruise missiles, he had sent a "clear" message to all world diplomacies: we let them leave at such an hour and they will arrive at such a point.
Phone call extends life
A phone call that prolongs life, but also war. All functional to avoid escalation , but useful to keep tension high in the Middle Eastern scene. In other words: we attack you, but you are warned in time to neutralize any missile or drone. The message is explicit: this time you are warned, the next time you are not. So it was, in the pantomime of war to be caressed, as if emotion were a crazy game that rages on the world's head.
Mission Sardinia
The NOTAM, the «NOtice To AirMissions», the high altitude flight map, is secret. The take-off of the "giant" of the air in the NATO codes is armored, like all covert missions. When the first jolts of that flight appeared beyond the Alps, in Tavolara, in front of Olbia, the aeronautical antennas segregated in the bowels of the most imposing stack of the Costa Smeralda recorded the first coordinates: Boeing E-3 Sentry took off at 2.31 am from the aeronautical base of Born in Geilenkirchen , Germany. At that point the ground radar records begin to "confess" the high-altitude mission: Sardinia, central-northern area of the island.
Intercept missiles and drones
In the flight path there is the starting point, but the final objective is covered by an eloquent acronym «N/A»: destination not available. Not a simple plane, but a real flying command and control tower, capable of managing hundreds of planes simultaneously, of intercepting any sign of missiles and drones on the horizon. Not many people have a plane of that size. In the world only the United States, NATO, the French Air Force, the Royal Saudi Air Force and the Chilean Air Force use it.
Pilot “Giotto”
The "dinosaur" of the skies does not go unnoticed, when it lands or takes off, otherwise it disappears, despite its immense rotating radar dome (the rotodome ) placed like an indelible mark right on the fuselage. When the skies of the island are still shrouded in darkness, the "Boeing sentinel" is positioned right in the heart of central Sardinia, between Capo Comino and Bitti, between Cala Gonone and Berchideddu. More than a pilot, holding the control stick still seems like Giotto himself, if it weren't for the automated help of artificial intelligence.
Circle route
The circles are infinite, with a perfect, continuous and repeated circumference, almost marking the circular perimeter of that aerial coordination on the border between the Mediterranean and Europe, as if the operational control of the skies had been erected at that point on the island in the phases immediately following the Iranian attack on the extreme periphery of Israel.
Island on alert
That something more significant than the usual air invasion in time for military exercises was taking place in Sardinia was perceived mid-morning, a few hours after the Iranian attack, when the "Boeing sentinel" was still circling with maniacal precision in the centre-north -east of the island. Cagliari-Elmas, the civil airport of southern Sardinia, in fact, in an instant, transforms into a military aeronautical base, with the low flyby of fighters and the landing of several planes camouflaged in the livery and flight codes.
Cagliari, air base
The sequence is close: the first to place the trolley on Cagliari soil is a "very covered" American plane that left a US airport during the night, this time before the Iranian attack. The landing on Sardinian soil is at 9.05 on runway 14 of the Cagliari airport. The only coordinates available to locate the flight are the model of the jet: Dassault Falcon 2000Lx, a real business plane supplied to various armed forces, usually reserved for the upper echelons of military commands.
I came and went from Elmas
Shortly before, another giant of the air had crossed the island's airspace, a Hercules C-130 , the famous plane of the Lockheed scandal, supplied to the United States - Navy and left from the US base of Sigonella in Sicily. Also landing on the Cagliari runway is a military cargo plane, shown in the photo above as it departs from Elmas. In this case the Air Force deployed on the northern front of the Cagliari-Elmas airport flies the Polish flag, like the cargo that landed at the Decimomannu air force base, also in the morning. An unprecedented coming and going.
Armored information
NATO information is armored, no one, except the leaders, can know what really happened in those hours over the skies of Sardinia. Certainly the paths we publish are much more than a test. That concentric circle traced in the heart of the island by the NATO "command plane", the aircraft capable of intercepting every plane, missile or drone, is an all too clear signal of the role that Sardinia is taking on in this explosive war scene .
Island, logistics base
Military analysts make no secret of the fact that they are trying to transform the island into a sort of military logistics platform, both aeronautical and naval, not too close to the conflict, but sufficiently central in the Mediterranean area to guarantee land and , as in this case, aerial and subsequently maritime. There are many signs in this direction, even if they are all kept under wraps. A role for the island on the Middle Eastern chessboard on which the Italian State has not yet said half a word with the Sardinian Region, despite the importance that this hypothesis could have, increasingly supported by eloquent and incontrovertible evidence.
Weapons and men
Regarding the military positioning of Sardinia in this nefarious scenario of the Middle East, there are, however, two other very important issues that cannot be underestimated. The first: the role of the German Rwm factory of Domusnovas in the supply of bombs and ammunition, sold liberally throughout the Arab world, including the strategic industrial agreement for the production in Sardinia of the Israeli Uvision drone. The second: the presence of a contingent of over 1500 men on the Israeli border with Lebanon. In that sort of "buffer" mission between Israel and Hezbollah, Italy sent the "Sassarini" several times. Now that the dangers in the area have grown disproportionately, for the Italian military and political leaders, the issue of repositioning that contingent on another side, removing it from imposing risks as soon as possible, is a very serious issue. The Italian Government, however, does not seem willing to review the position: in 2023 it has allocated another 149 million euros.
Serfdom & war
Last note: in addition to the already devastating weight of military servitudes, over 65% of the Italian ones are located in Sardinia, in total silence, there is now the risk of throwing new and cumbersome servitudes onto the island, this time war-related ones.
