On the 30th of October, the British Embassy in Italy published on its X profile some photos of a meeting between the Chief of the Air Staff of the Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare), Gen. Conserva, and his Royal Air Force (RAF) counterpart, Air Chief Marshal Harv Smyth. The meeting took place at Decimomannu air base in Sardinia and focused on bilateral talks on “opportunities to deepen future cooperation in the Air Mobility area.”

One of the images accompanying the meeting (see photo) shows, in the lower right corner, a document titled “Airbus A-400 for Italy,” bearing the logos of the Italian Air Force, the RAF, the Italian Ministry of Defense, and the UK MoD. It is easy to infer that the Italian Air Force is evaluating the acquisition of Airbus’s heavy/semi-strategic transport and tanker aircraft, although the stage of that evaluation is unclear. This is a known requirement, made more pressing by the flight hours accumulated by the C-130J fleet, which belongs to a different category than the ATLAS, to meet national needs as well as European needs under the European Air Transport Command (EATC) cooperation program.

However, the absence of Airbus personnel at the meeting, at least visibly, may raise doubts about whether an acquisition process is already underway unofficially or about to begin. This leaves more room for talks on leasing flight hours on the RAF’s A-400 fleet to the Italian Air Force. Perhaps, why not, in exchange for flight hours on the T-346, while the British await a decision on their future advanced trainer, without forgetting the cost concerns surrounding the “favorite” T-7 (in the British competition, BAE is the prime contractor for the aircraft).

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(Image credit: Marco Florian)