Force Commander Rear Admiral (LH)Andrea BIELLI
After joining the Italian Navy on August 1986, he attended the Naval Academy course 1987-1991 before selection for the US Navy’s aviator training.
Based two and a-half years across the southern US to gain his wings of gold, he then achieved
homeland all combat-ready Naval Aviator qualifications, serving also as Head of Air Detachments, Head Air Squadron Aviation Safety, Head Air Support Department at the national Fleet-Air Arm Command and Naval Aviation Liaison to the former Allied Air Component Command Headquarters Ramstein, Germany. He also qualified and engaged in conventional targeting (targeteer, weaponeer, time-sensitive targeting), collateral damage estimation analysis, operational planning, expeditionary operations and combat life-saver, education and training, capacity enhancement, civil-military cooperation, public information and communication, protocol and international relationships.
As Navy Officer, he served over ten years on board the Italian Navy’s major combatants and sailed the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, the Baltic, Red Sea, Gulf and Indian Ocean. He got actively involved in national, coalition, NATO and EU contexts, with operations-related assignments in both ATALANTA and ASPIDES.
His main command tours include the offshore patrol vessel SQUALO, the training sailing vessel PALINURO, the Hydrographic and Experimentation Naval Squadron, the Italian-led Combined Task Force 154 within the Combined Maritime Forces framework.
In his major ashore assignments, he served in all high-level military and military related national contexts: in the command groups of the Fleet Command and Navy General Staff, at the General Office of the Chief of Defence and at the Ministry of Defence, cabinet of the Undersecretary of State for Defence.
