She made the remarks at a press conference together with General Hans-Lothar Domrose, Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum and Lieutenant General Phil Jones, Chief of Staff Allied Command Transformation.
The spokesperson outlined that Exercise Trident Juncture 2015 will be the largest exercise conducted by the Alliance since 2002, which will involve 36,000 personnel from more than 30 NATO Allied and Partner Nations.
It will take place in Italy, Portugal and Spain, from October 3 to November 6, 2015.
"The purpose of the Exercise is to train and test the NATO Response Force, a highly ready and technologically advanced multinational force comprising land, air, maritime and Special Forces components," said General Hans-Lothar Domrose.
"Enhancing our response forces is a key part of NATO's overall effort to adapt to emerging security challenges," he added.
The Exercise will demonstrate NATO's new increased level of ambition in joint modern warfare and will show-case a capable, forward-leading Alliance equipped with the appropriate capability and capacity to meet present and future security challenges, according to NATO press release.
More than 12 major International Organizations, aid agencies and non-governmental organizations, such as the European Union and the African Union will also participate in the exercise.
Xinhua - china.org.cn
16/7/15
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NATO and its allies will hold their biggest military exercise in more than a decade from October, deploying 36,000 personnel across the Mediterranean to counter the threat of Islamic State group on the alliance's southern flank...
ReplyDeleteBriefly turning attention away from Russia, NATO commanders said on Wednesday the alliance would carry out some of its toughest training yet in a complex "artificial threat scenario" in which militants attack on land, from the air and at sea.
"We cannot choose between the eastern threat and the southern threat, we have to train for both," said General Hans-Lothar Domrose, commander of the NATO military command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, who is preparing the exercise.
After more than a decade of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan, the US-led military alliance is shifting to defend its territory.
More than 30 countries - including non-NATO nations such as Sweden and Austria - will take part in the exercises in Italy, Spain, Portugal and in the Mediterranean from Oct. 3 to Nov. 6.
Much of NATO's focus has been on what it sees as an increasingly hostile Russia, but the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is a central concern. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has warned the Arab Spring uprisings have ushered in a "brutal winter" of instability.
NATO has not held exercises on this scale since 2002, when 15 members of the alliance and 12 partner nations tested their capabilities in Norway and Poland.......Reuters........http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/135478.aspx