"Even though certain interoperability issues sometimes surface while planning joint exercises with allies, and understanding each other perfectly is sometimes challenging, I believe that in case there is a threat to the sovereignty of any of the nations, these are the countries to be the first ones to lend a brotherly hand to each other," Chief of Staff of the Mechanised Infantry Brigade Iron Wolf Colonel Mantas Paškevičius said.
On February 4 Senior Officer at the Danish Division (DDIV) Lieutenant Colonel Bo Andersen saluted the training audience from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and two Danish brigades gathered for the joint training organised by the Danish Division and wished them productive work, great results and mutual understanding.
General Adolfas Ramanauskas Warfare Training Centre in Nemenčinė hosts a joint training event organised by the Danish Division for Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and two Danish brigades' military personnel. A Branch Training element of the exercise ran from February 4 to 6, and Command post Exercise (CPX) Red Knight 2016 begins on February 8 and will be wrapped up on February 11.
The overall aim of the training event is to train and assess capability of the brigades to do operational planning as part of a multinational division and to enhance coordination among the participants, while individual objective of the training brigades' staffs is the development of individual battle orders and their transfer to battalion commanders. In total, the exercise involves roughly 250 troops.
The first week of training focussed on bringing in line the DDIV brigades' doctrinal aspect of mobile defence according to functional areas, i.e. to uniform planning, organisation and performance of tactical actions carried out by all brigades' specialists in mobile defence operations.
The DDIV Staff pays great regard to and arranges frequently this type of exercises to ensure that NATO allies are capable of responding to existing and potential threats with cohesive interoperability.
The Mechanised Infantry Brigade Iron Wolf was affiliated to the Danish Division in 2006 upon the endorsement of a memorandum of understanding by Chiefs of Defence of Denmark and Lithuania. The document stipulates cooperation of both countries' officers in international staffs, joint training events, exercises and multinational operations. Red Knight 2016 is scheduled in the DDIV Combat Readiness Plan covering the span from the autumn of 2015 till spring of 2016. Saber Knight 2016, the last exercise scheduled in the Plan will be held in June in Estonia.
Photo by the Lithuanian Armed Forces
