Commander Col. Antonino Massara

• Commander 36' Fighter Wing Commander
• Ministry of Defence, Italy

Col. Pil. Antonino Massara was born in Padua in 1979 and engaged in the air force in 1997 with the Urano IV Course. At the end of his academic studies he was sent to flight schools in Canada where he obtained his military pilot license in July 2003 on a hawk-115 aircraft and subsequently attended the pre-operational course at cold lake air base until January 2004.
He was then assigned to the 51st wing of Istrana where, after attending the operational conversion course on AMX aircraft at the 32nd wing of Amendola, he remained from 2004 to 2012 covering numerous tasks at the 103rd fighter-bomber group and the wing operations office.
During these years he participated three times in the ISAF mission at the Herat air base in Afghanistan, both as a pilot and as commander of the AMX flight squad of the “black cats” task group, as well as carrying out the task of appointed to the “air ops division” of the ISAF joint command in Kabul. In the summer of 2011, he participated in the “unified protector” operation in the skies of Libya, as commander of the AMX flight squad at the 37th wing of Trapani Birgi. Subsequently he attended the standard and master course at the institute of military sciences of aeronautical in Florence, at the end of which he was sent on a staff tour at the general staff of the air squad command.
In July 2012, transferred to the moody branch – Georgia/USA, after the conversion course on the a10c aircraft, he was assigned to the 74th fighter squadron of the USAF, where he took up the position of operations chief and pilot instructor on the a10c aircraft. He operated with this flight group from October 2012 to September 2015 participating in numerous exercises and a 7-month deployment at the Bagram air base – Afghanistan in support of the operation “enduring freedom”.
In September 2015 he was assigned to the 36th fighter wing in Gioia del Colle and after attending the operational conversion course on the typhoon aircraft at the 4th wing in Grosseto, he took up the position of head of the operations section of the xii group and in 2017 he participated in the air policing operation “Baltic Eagle” at the Amari air base – Estonia, as commander of the “task group typhoon”. Subsequently in September 2018 he took command of the XII Group and in March 2019 he led the first deployment of the typhoon component in support of the operation “Inerent Resolve – Prima Partica”, operating, until may of the same year, as commander of the task group at the al Jaber air base (Kuwait).
After his command period, in 2020 he attended the 22nd Issmi course and was then assigned to the 4th department of the General Secretariat of Defense and national armaments directorate, initially as head of the 1st section – combat aircraft and later as head of the 3rd “aeronautical programs” office and head of the 1st “international cooperation” office of the FCAS-Tempest program directorate.
Furthermore, between April and August 2023 he commands the air gladiator task force at the Constanta air base in Romania, as part of the NATO air policing area south mission. In July 2024 he took command of the 36th fighter wing of Gioia del Colle.