Common Effort 08: End of exercise ceremony

Mourmelon (France), 27 November 2008.

Officers, NCO’s and soldiers from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain, the five framework nations of the Eurocorps, from Austria, Greece, Poland and Turkey as sending nations and from the USA, Italy and Romania, who will integrate the Eurocorps as sending nations next year, and Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland participated. Some represented nations are members from the European Union and NATO. They had the opportunity to use the analytic capacity of the command posts and the decision making processes of this authentic multinational headquarters that characterizes Eurocorps. The coordination between land, air, sea and special forces was also tested.

The exercise was the culmination of Eurocorps’ long preparation process. This year the HQ was involved with two other exercises and an air deployment of the Fact Finding Team. This impressive series of exercises simultaneously became a test case for the new Communication and Information System (CIS) of the French armed forces (incorporating the initial interoperability between the French and German systems used by the French-German Brigade) and served as an efficiency test for the use of national and allied CIS and telecommunications.

The first elements of Eurocorps arrived in Camp Mourmelon on the 13 October 2008 and the redeployment will end around the 12 December 2008.

 

Pictures: OR6 PATRY - OR3 KOHLER

 

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