Exercise "Iniochos 2023"
From 24 April till 5 May 2023, the Elliniki Polemiki Aeroporia (HAF, Hellenic Air Force) hosted another “Iniochos” exercise at Andravida air base.
The history of Iniochos goes back to the 1980s when the exercise was conducted as a Greek only exercise. Over the years it has evolved and from 2015 the exercise was organised for the first time with international participants. Since then it has become a major exercise attracting a wide array of aircraft from both NATO partners as well as very exotic participants from the Middle East and Asia.
The exercise was divided into three different phases:
Phase 1: Detachment Deployment, 18 – 23 April 2023
Phase 2: Execution Phase, 24 April – 4 May 2023
Phase 3: Force Redeployment, 5-7 May 2023
All missions were supervised by the Hellenic Air Force Fighter Weapons School (FWS). These missions included Offensive Counter Air Operations (OCA), Defensive Counter Air Operations (DCA), Strategic Air Operations, Air Power Contribution to Counter-Land Operations (APCLO), Air Power Contribution to Maritime Operations (APCMO), RECCE, Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR), Time Sensitive Target (TST) and High Value Airborne Asset (HVAA). Also F-16 Tactical Simulators of the newly established HAF’s Synthetic Training Squadron have been used for a number of missions, expanding Iniochos to the virtual world.
This year saw a number of “first time” participants by means of Greek Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft which might have participated last year from their home base, but for the first time from Andravida for this years edition.
From abroad some highly interesting aircraft participated. Initially the list of participants appeared to be a little bit meagre but this improved considerably when time past by. The Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) seem to have elected Iniochos over Anatolian Eagle where they are frequent participants and deployed four F-16AMs to Andravida including three former Koninklijke Luchtmacht (KLu, Royal Netherlands Air Force) aircraft. Interestingly the F-16s were in the new darker grey colour scheme which resembles the USAF Have Glass colour scheme with the aircraft serials being painted on in a USAF style presentation and no longer in Arabic cyphers.
Other very interesting first time participants were the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) which deployed six 92 Squadron F-15SA Saudi Advanced Eagles based at Dhahran/King Abdullah Aziz Air Base to Andravida. The detachment consisted of a mix of new built Fiscal Year 2012 F-15SA and upgraded fiscal year 1993 F-15S variants.
A very welcome last minute addition was the Bharatiya Vayu Sena (IAF, Indian Air Force) that participated with four mighty Sukhoi Su-30MKI-3 Flankers from 222 Squadron Tigersharks based at Thanjavur AFS. The Indian Air Force was added only two weeks or so before the exercise commenced. It might have been a result from the visit of the Indian Cobra Warrior Mirage 2000 detachment that visited Andravida on their way to and from Waddington last March.
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More common NATO participants were two French Dassault Rafales from Mont-de-Marsan air base, Italian Tornados, Slovenian PC9s and Spanish Hornets. The latter were a nice surprise though as they were Gando based former US Navy F/A-18As. Also a Cyprus Air Force Leonardo AW139 participated.
Noteworthy absentees were the Israeli and US Air Forces which are frequent participants and the HAF Mirage 2000s. The latter was possibly due to the participation of four Mirage 2000s in exercise Orion 2023 at Mont-de-Marsan (France).
For the second year in row the HAF organised two spottersdays during the exercise. This is quite remarkable as Greece is a notorious spotterunfriendly country. Both days suffered from bad weather in the morning and on the second day this resulted in the cancellation of the morning wave. The first day saw four waves being launched, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one in the early evening and another all Greek wave was launched around 20:30hrs LT.
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All in all Iniochos has become one of the leading annual exercises in Europe and with such a great array of participants, the spottersdays and the fantastic Greek atmosphere it will hopefully be there for some time to come.
Iniochos 2023 participants:
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Photos by Paul van der Linden