The Italian Army has at its disposal a unique underground facility known as La-Carone, with a tunnel network stretching two kilometres in total. The site is used to train special operations forces in combat operations within complex underground environments.
La-Carone's layout, however, allows for considerably broader use, including testing of robot dogs and other ground-based drones, with simulated GPS denial and other challenging conditions.
Read more: Kuwait Wants Buy U.S. Roadrunner-M, Anvil-K for $2 billion - Will This Be the World's Largest Contract for Interceptor Drones
Defense News tells the story of the facility as follows. La-Carone was built in the 1930s during Mussolini's fascist regime and originally served as a large underground aviation fuel depot, featuring five drum-shaped tanks each seven metres tall and twenty metres wide.
During the Second World War, the facility withstood no fewer than 150 Allied bombing raids, a testament to the robustness of its construction. The Italian Air Force continued operating it as an underground fuel depot until 2000.
From 2000 to 2020 the facility stood abandoned, until the Italian Army determined in 2020 that it was ideally suited for training special forces in subterranean combat.
Since then La-Carone has been in active use, with personnel from 17 countries training there, including Israel, which has faced the particular challenge of tunnel clearance operations in Gaza.
Defense News specifically highlights that La-Carone's conditions allow for the simulation of absent or degraded radio signals and GPS denial, making it a valuable environment for developing and testing drone systems capable of operating without GPS.
Defense Express would note that a facility of this kind would be equally relevant for Ukraine, both as a testing ground for drone solutions of all types and as a venue for training in subterranean combat, a form of warfare that russia's occupying forces have been seeking to impose.
Ivan Kyrychevskyi, a serviceman of the 413th USF Raid Regiment and an expert at Defense Express
Read more: From S-400 System to Rail Logistics: Ukraine Conducts Multi-Layer Drone Offensive (Video)
