GRAFENWOEHR, Germany-- France is among the 40 nations that are participating in Combined Endeavor a multinational exercise, Sept. 9-22, 2011.
The goal of the exercise is to improve North American and European military communications, and computer network inter-connectivity to help nations partner together in responding to regional crisis or disaster.
Daniel Bellanger, French delegation chief, said Combined Endeavor gives France the opportunity to test their land command chain from platoon level to brigade level to prepare for multinational deployments on the field.
The exercise gives nations the opportunity to train and practice setting up coalition networks that may benefit them in the future.
“Each year we change the support signal battalion, so it's a great opportunity to drill our forces. On a technical aspect we find some issues on our system and it's better to know that before real world deployments and have time to solve them,” said Bellanger.
Nations that have previously participated in Combined Endeavor claim their experiences during the exercise benefit them in the present and in the past.
“We've used the knowledge we received during Combined Endeavor 10 to provide PKI services to other nations in a big exercise called Flandres with the UK,” said Bellanger.
While working with other nations in a coalition environment like Combined Endeavor you create friendships and bonds that will benefit you in the future.
“It's a great experience to work with so many nations. The human interoperability is one of the best parts of Combined Endeavor,” said Bellanger.