NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019 has been officially opened today. The opening ceremony was held at the Army Hall of Ministry of Defense of Georgia.

First Deputy Defense Minister Lela Chikovani and Deputy Chief of the NATO Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC), Brigade General Ladislav Jung addressed the military servicemen participating in the Exercise.

The exercise (Computer Assisted/Command Post Exercise – CAX/CPX), is being held from 18-29 March at the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Centre (JTEC) at National Centre “Krtsanisi” and involves 343 personnel from 24 NATO member states and partner countries.

This is the second NATO-Georgia exercise to be held in Georgia through the framework of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, but for the first time in which Georgian General Staff is leading a multinational crisis response exercise. It is also the first exercise which involves NATO planning processes from start to finish.

This exercise is designed to train a Georgian-led multinational brigade headquarters staff to plan, coordinate and execute scenario-based military responses to humanitarian crises. It is also testing the interoperability of Georgian, Allied and Partner Forces, as well as Georgian command and control capabilities, also the ability to adopt a comprehensive approach to a non-article 5 crisis response, involving civil-military cooperation with international organizations and non-governmental organizations.

This is the second NATO-Georgia exercise to take place through the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package (SNGP) framework – a set of 15 defence capacity building Initiatives agreed between Georgia and NATO at the Wales summit in 2014 and Warsaw Summit 2016. The first NATO-Georgia exercise was conducted in 2016 involving NATO allied and partner nations.

The brigade-level exercise is scheduled by NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), conducted by the Georgian General Staff with the mentoring of NATO LANDCOM, and directed by the NATO-Georgia Joint-Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) mentored by NATO Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC).

This exercise will be comprised of 21 Allied Nations and 3 Partner Nations, including Georgia as the Host Nation (Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, United Kingdom, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, United States, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Sweden).

Humanitarian bodies like the inter-governmental organizations – International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO, observer) will also be present during the exercise providing direct feedback and mentorship to exercise participants.