Greek Pilot Voted NATO’s Best Warrior for 2020

A Greek pilot from Crete has been recognized as NATO’s Best Warrior for 2020, bringing the prestigious award to the Greek Air Force for the second consecutive year.

Squadron Leader Anastasios Andronikakis, currently serving in Greece’s famed 340 “Fox” Squadron, was voted by his NATO colleagues who participated in the latest TLP air training series as the person they would most trust to lead them into battle.

The Fox, the historical Squadron which was founded in 1953, operates out of the military base of Souda Bay in Crete.

This is the second year in a row that a pilot in Greece’s Air Force has earned the title, which is awarded at the conclusion of the annual multinational Tactical Leadership Program at Los Llanos Air Base in Albacete, Spain.

NATO’s Best Warrior for the year 2019 was also a Greek pilot — flight Lieutenant Vassilis Kontopoulos from the 337 Squadron of the 110th Wing Battalion in Larissa.

The Greek Top Gun Academy for military pilots

Greece’s internationally-acclaimed Air Force pilots train in the Air Tactics Center of Andravida Air Base, in the western part of the Peloponnesian peninsula — the same facilities that hosted the “Iniochos” multinational military exercise in April.

All operational trials, tests and certifications, studies and evaluations of materiel and weapon systems take place at the ATC.

The Center’s mission is to provide advanced training to the personnel of all three branches (Army, Navy and Air Force) of the Hellenic Armed Forces, as well as to research and test new methods and procedures to improve the execution of Air Operations.

It also aims to systematically monitor the development of military technological systems and all related studies, in order to enhance the Air Force’s combat capability.

Since 1990, the Greek pilots who have participated in the Advanced Tactics Training Courses have had the opportunity to train in both Air to Air and Air to Ground/Surface tactics.

At the same time, Air Defense Controllers have the opportunity to train together with the pilots, thus strengthening their skills and morale, according to the ATC website.

An operational training body that is also an arena for expressing new ideas and searching for new tactics, while testing the capabilities of the Air Force, the Center has emerged over time as the leading resource of integrating innovative projects with modern technology and future development.

“Iniochos” Multinational Military Exercise Concludes

The multinational military exercise “Iniochos,” hosted by Greece, will come to a conclusion on Friday, after ten days of operations.

Armed forces elements from Greece, the U.S., Canada, Cyprus, France, Israel, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates are participating in the exercise, while officials from Austria, Egypt, Jordan, Romania and Slovenia are attending on observer status.

The Iniochos military exercise was first conducted in the late 1980s, as a small-scale tactical level exercise, tailored to the contemporary necessity for training in combined air operations in accordance with the Hellenic Air Force Doctrine.

Over the following years, its success led to its becoming established as an annual event.