As we had written in an article dedicated to the missions carried out by the only Italian Air Force Gulfstream E.550 CAEW in service at the beginning of this year, the second aircraft, MM62303, had been grounded since the end of December, specifically since the 27th.
In the first two months of the year, we had not tracked any of its missions, just at the time when Italy had expressed its readiness to send one of its two CAEWs (an asset that only Italy possesses within NATO) to the Red Sea, based in Djibouti.
However, on March 6th, the second CAEW returned to flight, and since then, within a week, it has completed three missions (training or testing) in southern Italy. It’s worth noting that on two occasions, the aircraft also made stops for several hours at the Gioia del Colle base in Puglia.
At this point, we are curious to see the aircraft’s upcoming flights to understand if it will also be employed in operational missions (in the Black Sea or Poland) like its “sibling” and if it will be the one sent to the Red Sea (provided there is indeed a need to redeploy such an asset to Djibouti).