GRAFENWOEHR, Germany-- Today 40 nations participated in the Combined Endeavor 2011 opening ceremony to officially launch the exercise.
Combined Endeavor is a communication and computer network exercise that currently draws nations from throughout Europe and North America. These teams come to train together on communication and computer network systems and to synchronize their technology with the other nations.
Combined Endeavor has evolved from being a multinational technical exercise to becoming a place where nations can meet and work through technological and build diplomatic solutions to current issues. For example: Poland, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova used Combined Endeavor to collaborate on international radio communications and data networking. Turkey and Armenia used the exercise to meet and coordinate agreements for over-flight approval.
“In this 17th year of the exercise, the focus has shifted from an exercise originally built on functional testing of the technology and networks” said Col. Lemuel Thomas, chief of International C4 Engagement & Interoperability for the U.S. European Command, “Then identifying the subsequent critical information exchanges needed to support the operators and decision makers from all of our collective countries. It was because of this new focus that we created an exercise theme for 2011 titled; Coalition Information Dominance,” said Thomas
“Those three words have already begun to shift this exercise. In essence, this year you have graduated and moved toward an entirely new domain. This move over the next several years will help the coalition focus on better ways of facilitating their information exchanges,” he said.
“I'm reminded the real goal of this exercise is to ensure that communication systems, command and control systems, and our signal forces are ready to support coalition operations, and they are integrated with those of our multinational partners,” said Thomas.