The Allied Airpower Podcast

When the Alpha Scramble order came, Lt Luis had a job to do. The adrenaline could wait.
In this episode of The Allied Airpower Podcast, Jose “Houdini” Davis speaks with Lt Luis about his first operational interception, the preparation behind it, and the people who make NATO’s Baltic Air Defence mission possible.
An Alpha Scramble is a real-world activation of NATO’s alert forces. For Spanish Lt Luis, it meant getting airborne to intercept, identify, and escort a Russian aircraft flying in international airspace. Procedures practiced repeatedly in training now guided an operational mission. His attention stayed on the tasks ahead; only after returning could he reflect on reaching a goal he had imagined since childhood.
Much of the conversation turns to the work behind that response. Maintenance, weapons, operations, communications, and support personnel keep the aircraft ready, while Allied hosts in the Baltics help sustain the deployment. Lt Luis describes the people supporting him as his “angels.” His first interception was an achievement shared by the whole Allied detachment.
The Spanish Ambar Tactical Air Detachment is currently on NATO’s Eastern Flank conducting the Air Defense mission, alongside the Turkish Air Force and their Baltic hosts. Across NATO’s Eastern Flank, Italian Eurofighters are deployed to Lithuania; Turkish F-16s to Estonia; and Spanish fighters to Romania and Estonia, as part of NATO’s robust Air Defence posture, protecting every inch of NATO Airspace.
That reliance on others also shapes what NATO means to him. Through multinational exercises, Allied pilots learn how one another’s Air Forces work, approach decisions, and prepare for missions. They build relationships alongside their operational skills.
As Lt Luis explains, one of NATO’s most valuable contributions is building trust before it is needed. That trust, developed through training and cooperation, supports the collective responsibility of defending NATO skies.
Recorded Monday, 28 September 2026.


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A passenger aircraft loses radio contact with air traffic controllers. Elsewhere, a hostile missile launches towards Allied territory. These situations demand different responses, but both underscore why NATO’s Air Defence posture must be able to detect, assess, and respond to threats together.
As a defensive Alliance, NATO brings together radars, fighter jets, ground-based air and missile defence systems, and Allied warships through its Integrated Air and Missile Defence — or IAMD. Working across national borders, this network helps protect Allied territory and populations in peacetime, crisis, and conflict.
When a civilian aircraft stops communicating, ground-based and airborne radars can track its movements while fighter jets scramble to investigate. Once alongside, pilots can visually identify the aircraft, assess the situation, and, if necessary, guide it to safety.
An incoming missile requires a different response. Sensors on land, at sea, in the air, or in space can detect the threat, while NATO command posts assess its trajectory and determine an appropriate interception option. Complementary defence systems provide multiple ways to engage different threats, with ground-based systems, warships, and fighter aircraft each contributing to the wider defence.
The strength of this approach lies in integration: connecting detection, decision-making, and interception so that individual capabilities work as part of a coordinated whole.
But the threats continue to evolve.
Drones range from large military aircraft to small commercial platforms capable of causing damage and disruption, particularly when deployed in groups. Hypersonic weapons travelling at more than five times the speed of sound, with the ability to manoeuvre during flight, present further tracking and interception challenges. NATO’s new Air Defence framework addresses these modern challenges: From Air Policing to Air Defence, NATO is prepared and postured to tackle these challenges as Allies are developing capabilities to address these threats while adapting the defences already in place.
For more than six decades, NATO’s Air Defence has helped safeguard Allied skies. Its purpose remains constant: maintaining vigilance, responding to threats, and protecting the people and territory of the Alliance: 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.


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Eject! Eject! Eject! In this episode of The Allied Airpower Podcast, Jose ‘Houdini’ Davis sits down with Danish Lieutenant Colonel Martin ‘AMI’ Friis for a conversation about life in the cockpit and what it takes to become a NATO fighter pilot.
AMI recalls a 1996 departure on a routine training flight: Sitting behind a student pilot in an F-16, he received a warning from the control tower: their engine was on fire. Looking over his shoulder, he saw orange surrounding the aircraft. Within seconds, he ordered both pilots to eject. Both survived; AMI was flying again the following week.
That experience gives weight to his explanation of fighter flying. Pilots must stay ahead of the aircraft, managing communications, scanning their surroundings, and making tactical decisions. Training makes flying second nature.
With a career spanning around four decades, including seventeen years flying the F-16, AMI has served as a squadron commander, an instructor at NATO’s Tactical Leadership Programme, and Denmark’s chief of aviation safety. Today, in Allied Air Command’s A3 Operations Support Branch, he helps turn NATO plans into major exercises, including Ramstein Flag: bringing cockpit experience to the preparation of Allied forces.
The conversation also explores the future of air warfare. Drawing on Ukraine, AMI discusses identifying airborne threats and selecting the right capabilities to defeat them. And while modern weapons favour engagements beyond visual range, he explains why dogfighting remains a skill pilots must retain.
For AMI, shared training builds the trust that allows Allied aviators to fly and fight together. His childhood memory of the fortified border between East and West Germany brings that mission back to its human purpose: defending “our family, our kids, our neighbors and friends.”
Recorded Tuesday, 19 May 2026.


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These five stories show how NATO is strengthening Air & Space power through faster integration, persistent readiness and closer cooperation between Allied forces.
In Iceland, Belgian F-16s took over NATO’s Air Defence mission at Keflavik, supporting Arctic Sentry and the Alliance’s broader move toward a more unified Integrated Air and Missile Defence posture. The deployment reflects a shift away from traditional Air Policing alone toward a wider approach designed to address a broader range of threats.
That same emphasis on interoperability was visible in Estonia, where Spanish EF-18M fighters, Turkish F-16s and Estonian ground crews trained together at Ämari. The activity focused on practical coordination, from refuelling and emergency procedures to familiarisation flights, helping deployed forces integrate quickly with host-nation and Allied personnel.
In Romania, Spain’s Paznic Detachment completed 30 days of continuous Quick Reaction Alert duty, carrying out 15 Alpha Scrambles. One of those alerts led to the interception and neutralisation of a drone that had entered Romanian airspace. Alongside these operational missions, the detachment continued multinational training, Agile Combat Employment activity and air-to-air refuelling, reinforcing its ability to respond rapidly along NATO’s eastern flank.
Further north, representatives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden met at Combined Air Operations Centre Bodø to advance the Nordic Airpower Concept. With Finland and Sweden now part of NATO, the five Nordic countries are working more closely to align their Air Forces, improve regional cooperation and strengthen NATO’s northern posture.
The space domain was also part of this wider picture. From Andøya Spaceport in Norway, Isar Aerospace successfully placed satellites into orbit, adding to Europe’s commercial launch capability. While the mission was not a NATO operation, it highlighted the importance of resilient civilian and commercial space infrastructure to the Alliance. NATO increasingly depends on reliable access to space-based services for communications, navigation, surveillance and situational awareness.
Taken together, these updates point to a more connected NATO Air and Space posture. Whether through fighter deployments, Quick Reaction Alert, Nordic coordination or commercial access to orbit, the focus is on ensuring Allied forces and supporting systems can operate together, respond quickly and remain resilient across the Euro-Atlantic area.


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In this episode of The Allied Airpower Podcast, Jose “Houdini” Davis takes listeners inside Ramstein Flag, one of NATO Allied Air Command’s most important large-scale air exercises.
Ramstein Flag is not just about aircraft, bases, or hardware. It is about NATO practicing how to fight as one air component in an Article 5 scenario — across nations, across geography, and under pressure.
The episode explains how Ramstein Flag builds on the Flag-series tradition of realistic high-end combat training, while giving it a NATO collective defence focus. The episode traces the exercise from its first edition in Greece in 2024, through the 2025 edition in the Netherlands, and into Ramstein Flag 2026.
This year’s exercise marks a major step forward, bringing together 18 Allied nations, more than 200 aircraft, and over 20 operating locations across Europe. Live-flying activity in NATO’s northern and southern Joint Operations Areas is supported by synthetic training, testing whether the Alliance can coordinate Airpower across a broad theatre.
The episode also makes clear that Ramstein Flag 2026 is not only about Agile Combat Employment. ACE is part of the picture, but the broader focus includes Integrated Air and Missile Defence, Counter Anti-Access/Area Denial, and seamless data and information sharing among Allies.
Above all, Ramstein Flag is about cohesion. Aircraft matter, but so do maintainers, tankers, command links, airspace procedures, sensor feeds, and host-nation support. Together, these pieces form Allied Airpower, which allows NATO to generate, sustain, and synchronize combat power.
Recorded Wednesday, 5 June 2026.


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