A brief look into TRIDENT JUNCTURE 15: CPX and LIVEX
NATOs store øvelse, Trident Juncture, er godt i gang. Øvelsen er den mest omfattende på over ti år, og er totalt sett en av de største siden den kalde krigen. Ukens analyse er skrevet av Inci Kucukaksoy, Public Affairs Officer ved Joint Warfare Centre (Jåttå) og gir oppdatert informasjon om denne NATO-øvelsen som Norge er en del av. God lesning!
NATO is currently conducting its largest and most ambitious exercise in over a decade, TRIDENT JUNCTURE 15 (TRJE15). The first part of the exercise was concluded on 16 October, involving approximately 4,000 military personnel and NATO civilians. This was an operational level Computer Assisted/Command Post Exercise (CAX/CPX) directed by German Army Major General Reinhard Wolski, Commander of the Joint Warfare Centre (JWC).
The second part, which is underway, is a tactical level Live Exercise (LIVEX), featuring more than 36,000 service personnel from 28 member nations and 9 partner nations. Overall, the complexity of TRJE15 extends to exercise locations as well including Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, Canada, Norway, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
TRJE15 was one in a series of long-planned exercises designed to ensure that NATO is ready to respond rapidly to any threats emerging from any direction. The purpose was to test the command-and-control elements of the NATO Response Force (NRF) 16, led by Joint Force Command Brunssum (JFC Brunssum), by giving them the opportunity to deploy and train together with partners, while demonstrating NATO's capabilities and readiness to respond quickly across the full spectrum of operations. The exercise also aims to train the functions of the newly established very-high readiness Spearhead Force.
For JWC, the planning and the scenario development for TRJE15 began in July 2013.
First used in TRJE15, the SOROTAN scenario, created by JWC’s Scenario team, enabled an out-of-area, non-Article 5 Crisis Response Operation against a near peer opponent in the fictitious region of Cerasia. The main aggressor in this scenario is the dictatorship “Kamon” who invades its weaker neighbor “Lakuta” before moving on to expand its military aggression to the entire region.
During the operational level CPX, the Stavanger-based Exercise Control (EXCON) organization tested the ability of the Training Audiences to respond to a wide range of security threats from hybrid warfare to maritime and air combat by ”pushing” more than 3,000 injects requiring an action --- all occurring within the SOROTAN scenario. As such, during the CPX, JWC challenged and tested the Training Audiences’ ability to response to any emerging crisis --- be it a crisis response operation or highly complex humanitarian emergencies. Now the focus is on the tactical training of the NRF --- the LIVEX part will continue until 6 November.
This weekly recommendation for further reading is JWCs webpage, where you can find additional information about Trident Juncture.
Inci Kucukaksoy is Public Affairs Officer at the Joint Warfare Centre (Jåttå)