Brunssum, the
Netherlands - Yesterday,
ten consecutive twelve-hour working days and a relentless, ever-increasing,
battle-rhythm tempo came to an end as Exercise Trident Jupiter 2019-1
(TRJU19-1) reached completion. Many
lessons have been learned that, over time, will result in new working practices
but, importantly, the NATO Response Force 2020 (NRF20) force package is now
certified and, should the North Atlantic Council decide to activate it in the
coming year, JFC Brunssum is ready to take command.
General Bühler, Commander
JFC Brunssum and the Officer Conducting the Exercise, stated: ‘exercises such as Trident Jupiter serve to
demonstrate the Alliance’s unwavering commitment to Collective Defence;
willingness to continuously embrace change in order to deter emerging security
threats; and, via the execution of a deliberate policy of transparency,
determination to deter potential adversaries through demonstration of
cutting-edge military capability that is maintained at high levels of readiness
and interoperability.
This exercise gathered 3000
military and civilian personnel as participants, evaluators and observers. Altogether thirty NATO member and partner
nations participated in nine different exercise locations across Europe. TRJU19-1 was a pre-planned, pre-coordinated
exercise. It was not the result of any
perceived security threat to NATO members.
Importantly, the exercise challenged entities at all levels of military
command in order to improve internal processes.
In turn, this allows the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (General Tod D.
Wolters) to deploy, when authorised, scalable Joint Forces to deter and, if
necessary, defend against an adversary’s military aggression.
The TRJU19 exercise campaign
is the largest and most complex exercise planned and executed by the Alliance’s
Joint Warfare Centre (based in Stavanger, Norway) to date. It involves two linked exercises ranging from
Small Joint Operations to Major Joint Operations Plus. Both exercises are large regarding the number
of forces participating, which serves to make the exercise construct bigger
than ever before. The first part, TRJU19-1
(just concluded), trained the NRF20 force package at Small Joint Operations
scale, and evaluated / certified the NRF20 Component Commands and Naval
Striking & Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO), based at Oeiras, Portugal,
as a NATO Expanded Task Force to further improve military interoperability and
readiness. The second part, TRJU19-2,
will train participants within a Major Joint Operation Plus Command and Control
construct at scale in order to evaluate and certify JFC Brunssum as a Joint
Task Force HQ; TRJU19-2 will be conducted in March 2020. Both exercises are Article V, high-intensity
operations against a peer adversary contesting NATO in all warfare domains.
In any crisis NATO efforts
will continue to include diplomatic activities as part of a wider comprehensive
approach and the leveraging of international community actors to convince a
potential enemy to change its course