POSTOJNA, Slovenia – More than 450 participants including U.S. Soldiers, Airmen, and Sailors took part in the opening ceremony for Immediate Response 14 here on August 17, 2014.
Immediate Response 14 is an exercise designed to deploy multinational forces in response to a disaster relief mission. The exercise also improves NATO interoperability between U.S. forces and participating nations to include Albania, Denmark, Great Britain, Montenegro, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Slovenia.
“The goal is to build relationships and training because we don’t know where we’re going to deploy next, but we do know that we’re not going to deploy alone, said Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, the deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Europe.
“If we’re going to deploy together we’re going to train together, but the most important objective is to get to know other Soldiers from other nations.”
Participants of the exercise will be spread out in various areas of operations simultaneously between bases in Slovenia and Croatia working to develop a common understanding of multi national staff planning and procedures.
“We have to get to know each other first then deal with the difficulties of learning all the different military processes for each country later,” Piatt said. “I hope the Soldiers get to meet someone from a different country and get a different perspective on challenges we face in Europe and across the world.”
U.S. forces will be teaching classes, providing subject matter experts to act as observer controllers for the field training exercises, and provide support to Slovenians in running the exercise. Over the next 14 days Soldiers from the participating nations will be working together to build security assurance among NATO and allies in the region.
Maj. Gen. Dobran Bozic, chief of the general staff of the Slovenian armed forces, said he is excited that his country is playing host to a majority of the exercise’s activities and sees this exercise as a helping tool in stabilizing the region.
“We’re really happy that we can host this exercise in Slovenia because we see this exercise as a bridge between the East and West,” Bozic said. “It’s always a great experience working with the U.S. because the U.S. brings some sort of stability in frame work and we bring some out of the box thinking, which makes our countries a good package together.
| Date Taken: | 08.17.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2014 05:40 |
| Story ID: | 139750 |
| Location: | POSTOJNA, SI |
| Web Views: | 43 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and multinationals kick off Immediate Response 14, by SFC Gregory Williams, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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