Strategic manoeuvres in Eastern Europe

Romanian soldiers are participating alongside foreign partners in military exercises held in Romania.

Corina Cristea, 16.06.2015, 14:06

Designed to test the capacity of the Allied
Joint Force Command Naples to lead a NATO collective defence operation, the
TRIDENT JOUST 15 exercise brings together 1,000 troops from 25 NATO members in
the Cincu shooting ground in Brasov county (central Romania).

Between June 17-28, an Allied Joint Force
Command headquarters are for the first time deployed in Romania where they will
conduct the shifting of command and control of the NATO Response Force to a
temporary location. As of this year the Allied Joint Force Command Naples is in
charge of that Force. So, the headquarters will temporarily move to Romania for
the duration of the exercise, and the Joint Logistics Support Group, based in
Naples, is deploying its headquarters to Bulgaria to exercise its capability in
support of the drill. The exercise was announced last month by admiral Mark Ferguson,
the commander of the Allied Joint Force Command Naples jointly with Romanian
Defence Minister, Mircea Dusa.

TRIDENT JOUST is a part of a larger series of
NATO defence exercises, the operations focusing on enhancing interoperability,
readiness and responsiveness among member and partner states. The series
referred to ALLIED SHIELD also includes the exercise NOBLE JUMP, the first
training deployment of Allied High Readiness Joint Task Force units. It also
includes BALTOPS, an allied naval exercise to take place in the Baltic Sea and
SABER STRIKE, a land exercise held in the Baltic states. All in all, almost
14,000 troops will participate in this series of training events, taking place
across the Alliance in the month of June.
According to admiral Ferguson, these exercises demonstrate that NATO is
transforming and adapting to meet the new security challenges facing the
Alliance, as identified at the Wales summit.

The mission of the Allied Joint Force Command
Naples is to prepare for, plan and conduct military operations to preserve the
peace, security and territorial integrity of the NATO member states. In another
development, until June 26 Romanian troops are also participating in a
multinational exercise of the special operations Forces called ROUSOFEX 15. As
many as 1,500 troops with more than 100 pieces of combat equipment from
Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, the Republic of Moldova, Poland, Romania, the US and
Turkey are taking part in that tactical exercise held in several garrisons and
shooting grounds in eastern Romania.