Synopsis
Spanish fighter jets hit the throttles and took to the skies over the Baltic Sea region during exercise Ramstein Alloy 2024.
An annual air policing exercise, Ramstein Alloy tests the ability of NATO’s air forces to safeguard the airspace over and around NATO Allies. For this year’s exercise, hosted by Estonia, Spanish Air Force EF-18 Hornet strike fighters took off from Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania, where they are currently stationed on a Baltic Air Policing mission rotation. Overhead a Spanish Air Force A400M refueller gassed up Finnish and Spanish fighters.
Air policing is a peacetime activity conducted by NATO Allies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to ensure the integrity of Allied airspace. As part of air policing, fighters regularly scramble to investigate suspicious air contacts that fail to broadcast an identification code, or fail to respond to air traffic controller hails. Sometimes, these aircraft are commercial planes experiencing a communications malfunction; others are Russian military aircraft flying near NATO Allies in international airspace.
Footage includes shots of Spanish EF-18s launching a training scramble, and conducting mid-air refuelling with Finnish Air Force fighters, as well as an interview with a Spanish Air Force officer.
Transcript
---SHOTLIST—
(00:00) MEDIUM SHOT – SPANISH F-18 MOVING OUT OF HANGAR
(00:09) MEDIUM SHOT - SPANISH F-18 MOVING INTO POSITION ON RUNWAY
(00:18) WIDE SHOT – REAR VIEW OF SPANISH F-18 BEING DE-ICED
(00:24) MEDIUM SHOT - SPANISH F-18 BEING DE-ICED
(00:32) WIDE SHOT - SPANISH F-18 BEING DE-ICED
(00:42) WIDE SHOT - SPANISH F-18 MOVING INTO POSITION ON RUNWAY
(00:47) WIDE SHOT - SPANISH F-18 MOVING INTO POSITION ON RUNWAY
(00:55) SLOW MOTION SHOT – NO AUDIO – REAR OF SPANISH F-18
(01:00) SLOW MOTION SHOT – NO AUDIO – SIDE OF SPANISH F-18 ON RUNWAY
(01:07) LONG SHOT X2- SPANISH F-18 TAKING OFF
(01:40) CLOSE UP – ATLAS A400M FLIGHT CREW BADGE
(01:43) MEDIUM SHOT – WINDOW VIEW ON ENGINES OF ATLAS A400M
(01:49) MEDIUM SHOT X4 - SPANISH F-18 JETS FLY IN CLOSE TO ATLAS A400M
(02:17) MEDIUM SHOT - SPANISH F-18 CONNECTS TO REFUELLING HOSE
(02:44) MEDIUM SHOT – SPANISH F-18 FLYING ALONGSIDE
(02:47) LONG SHOT - PAIR OF SPANISH F-18 JETS FLY AWAY
(02:54) LONG SHOT X2 - SPANISH F-18 FLYING THROUGH CLOUDS
(03:08) SLOW MOTION SHOT – NO AUDIO – FINNISH AIR FORCE F-18 CONNECTING TO FUEL LINE
(03:46) SOUNDBITES IN ENGLISH
OF-3 Major Miguel Jiménez Barragán, F-18 PILOT, SPANISH AIR FORCE
‘Ramstein Alloy, it's not just another exercise. It's the exercise that we do here every, three times a year with every rotation. It’s a great opportunity to, for all nations that participate or they are just nearby, Poland or Germany, to get together, to train together in a special environment like this part of the NATO is. We join all together, the tankers, the fighter jets, the controllers. We plan together, we fly together with a brief, and we bring back home some lessons learned. We are not here alone. We are here on the shoulders of giants. Because we've been doing it here for a long time. So now we are getting really good.’
(04:30) ‘For example, when the hoses are free, you call, ‘I'm ready, I'm ready to get some gas’ in these code words that we have for that. They clear you and then you are close to the hose, and then when you are cleared, you basically do approach, you contact and there's this positive flow. It depends on how much fuel you need, but normally a minute per 2,000, per 3,000 pounds. So it goes pretty fast to get the gas.’
(04:57) ‘It is indeed a dangerous operation. But the thing is, we do it every time within the same way so your brain gets used to what you want to see, the velocity. The way you approach the big jet is in a way that you are not going to break anything. But it's just a usual operation, we do it every other week. So we are used to do that in a safe manner.’
(05:24) ‘Now I understand that NATO is this common language. It might be English, but there is something underneath, which is the procedures. For example, if I am embedded with some Germans flying, that means I pretty much know how they're going to conduct their operation. Of course, there is some personality in every nation, in every unit, but we can transfer here, train the next day. There is no warm-up phase. We don't need really too much to work together.’
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