Immediate Response 14 EXE presented

The Exercise is organised by the Croatian Armed Forces and the Slovenian Armed Forces and the USAREUR and combines a computer-assisted and field exercise.
The distinguished visitors included the Director of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces, Major General Mate Pađen, Deputy Commander of the Croatian Army, Brigadier General Mladen Fuzul, the Commander of the Croatian Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, Brigadier General Blaž Beretin, the Deputy Director of the Croatian Defence Academy, Commodore Tihomir Erced and Major General Drago Matanović.

The Exercise, aimed at promoting and strengthening of international military-to-military and civil-military co-operation and of interoperability in the event of crisis situations, is being conducted from 17 to 30 August 2014 in three locations – in the Simulation Centre of the Croatian Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, in the Simulation Centre of the Slovenian Armed Forces in Postojna and at the Training Range at Poček and the Barracks at Vipava respectively.  The participants include the representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Hungary, Denmark and the United Kingdom. The primary goal is to train the military personnel to conduct peace support operations with the emphasis placed on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.

The Exercise was presented in Postojna concurrently with the presentation in Zagreb, the two events connected through VTC. The Slovenian presentation was attended by the President of Slovenia as Commander-in-Chief of the Slovenian Armed Forces, Borut Pahor, who praised the international co-operation benefit of the Exercise.
The co-directors of the Exercise brought the details and the course itself  – Colonel Jeffrey Meeker and Brigadier General Miha Škerbinc addressing the visitors from Postojna, and Brigadier General Siniša Jurković from Zagreb. The visitors familiarised themselves with the exercise workposts at the Simulation Centre.

Major General Pađen highlighted that the Exercise is held at successivelly senior command level, and that Slovenia’s partipation in 2014 gave it a new form. The most important thing about the Exercise , said General Pađen, is that the participants’ forces have the opportunity to test their joint operation in real time, through the Exercise scenario, and that the participants’ experiences are highly positive. The co-operation is envisaged to continue.
Brigadier General Jurković emphasised the security and stability dimension of the Exercise and its benefit in terms of trust and partnership among the participants. He also stressed the Exercise at once demonstrating and enhancing the interoperability, and harmonising the procedures to be applied by staffs in joint actions and operations.