An Overview on NATO in 2015: Trident Juncture

01/31/2016

01/31/2016: The 2015 annual NATO report provides an overview of  NATO activities in 2015.

Credit Video: Natochannel:1/27/16

Trident Juncture

According to a piece written by Murielle Delaporte and published 10/20/15 about

This exercise, the largest since 2002 Strong resolve, should not be read as a reaction to Russia’s recent behavior, since it has been in the making for the past two years, but as a demonstration of the Alliance’s readiness.

“Trident Juncture 2015 is to show NATO’s deterrence posture and its ability to adapt to any development or threat reflecting the Wales Summit’s objectives”, General Mercier explained a few days ago at a roundtable in Washington, D.C.

Meant to assess the Alliance’s capacities, readiness, speed and interoperability, TJ15 is to be considered a testbed for the Readiness Action Plan (RAP) and the recently implemented Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VHRJTF).But for General Mercier, it is “much more than a training exercise.”

TJ15 addresses three major goals:

First, the exercise focuses on a key flagship activity for NATO’s Connecting Forces Initiative (CFI) launched in the wake of the 2012 Chicago Summit.

TJ15 will bring together 17 national exercises:

“This is the key change compared to the 2002 exercise which I was part of,” stressed General Mercier, head of the NATO Transformation Command.

‘Many national exercises are going to be held under the same scenario, which makes it very interesting and realistic, since the same crisis can affect both sides of the Atlantic.

Trident Juncture brings a strong value added to them.

Second, the task of preparing to connect these exercises and a large number of forces and capacities has just ended and was done via a Command Post Exercise.
This CPX lasted from October 3rd  through  October 16th and involved Allied Joint Force Command Headquarters Brunssum and several other headquarters.

A certification process of these headquarters, as well as of the Visegrad European Battle Group[2], is to be completed during this period.

For General Mercier, “the connection and the coordination which took place between Canada and the European countries participating in the exercise worked even better than expected and is something we can build on for the future.”

Third, TJ15 has to be considered as a “laboratory for NATO’s new ideas and new concepts,” says SACT.

For the very first time, industries will be involved in the course of the exercise as observers, in order to better comprehend the battlefield requirements expressed by the armed forces.

As many as 35 firms will be monitoring the exercise and such participation will be addressed at the previously-mentioned Industry Forum.

For the complete report, see the following:

20160128_SG_AnnualReport_2015_en