The Italian Air Force on Friday sent four Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to the Black Sea coast of Romania for a four-month enhanced Air Policing deployment, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
130-strong Italian Eurofighter detachment will be deployed at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in southeastern Romania and carry out air police missions alongside the Romanian Air Forces over the country adjacent to the Black Sea, according to the National Defence Ministry of Romania.
The joint NATO-command air police missions will contribute to the development of the responsiveness and discouragement capacity, as well as to the strengthening of the inter-operability between the Romanian and the Italian Air Forces, said the ministry.
According to NATO, the Air Policing is a peacetime mission for "safeguarding the integrity of the NATO Alliance Member's airspace", with member states taking part in it on a rotating basis.
NATO began to carry out collective air police operations in Central and Eastern Europe in 2014.