Blog Posts tagged with "Bosnia and Herzegovina"
LOGEX 13: workshop in wintery Montenegro
After landing in Podgorica, Montenegro, last week for the LOGEX 13 Main Planning Conference I quickly realized the urgency of the Montenegrin government's request for assistance due to the large amounts of snow in the southern portion of the country. On the way to the airport it was hard not to notice the bent and broken trees that lined the road; the pieces of overhang that were bent or broken on the roofs of houses and buildings; the caved in roofs; and of course the piles and piles of snow along the roads and in the parking lots.
It is important to know that Montenegro does not have a Director of Logistics in their Ministry of Defense -- all logistics support is handled at the company level. This system is advantageous because tasks can be organized and executed very quickly, while a disadvantage is that it is difficult to manage several logistical units to accomplish a large task.
Colonel Rifet Kosavac, the Montenegro Deputy Minister whith whom we met before the start of the conference, was very grateful for the support that is being provided by Belgium, Greece and the United States. He mentioned specifically the two helicopters and crews provided. He went on to say it is difficult to prepare for a situation like this because they typically don’t see the amount of snow they recently received in a normal winter -- he called it a fifty year storm.
Colonel Kosavac stressed that they are working to increase the number of English speaking officers, purchasing weapons and equipment that meet NATO standards, and working to incorporate what they are learning at the LOGEX workshops into the daily job.
For this, the second of five scheduled LOGEX workshops, we drove to a training center in Danilovgrad, Montenegro, to meet with 17 Montenegro military personnel and observers from Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Serbia. The objectives of the workshop:
- train logistical staff officers,
- increase familiarity of logistics staff officers with use of NATO procedures for logistics planning and implementation,
- increase cooperation and coordination among logistics staff officers for future combined operations,
- assess logistics support requirements,
- practice NATO reporting procedures, and
- using NATO logistics C4 systems such as LOGFAS.
In the end, Montenegro developed a Detailed Deployment Plan (DDP), equivalent to the Time Phase Force Deployment Data (TPFDD).
The week’s worth of training was vital to ensure a successful exercise in February. During the week participants were introduced to NATO/National Security Element (NSE) guidelines, the NATO Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), Deployed Contracting, Acquisition Cross Service Agreements (ACSA), NATO Contracting, NAMSA and participated in five breakout sessions to develop and build their National DDP to use during execution. The Main Planning Conference (MPC) was held at the same location and overlapped with three days of the workshop. Colonel Mirsad Pajevic, from Bosnia and Herzegovina; Colonel Rifet Kosovac, the Montenegro Deputy Minister; and ten other representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Macedonia, Serbia, Sweden, and United Kingdom attended the MPC. These attndees reviewed and finalized the the draft Exercise Specification (EXSPEC) was review and finalized. Due to increased interest, they decided Medical Logistics and Engineering will be added to the scheduled workshops and the concepts and procedures will be intriduced in the last LOGEX 13 in October.
In all, the participants of the workshop gained a better understanding of how Deployed Contracting and RSOM occur during NATO operations and they learned how to build their National DDP. The participants of the MPC finalized the Exercise Specification (EXSPEC) and worked to add two additional functional areas to the workshop. As I observed the interactions of the country reps in action, I felt pride in the accomplishments these countries are achieving with their participation in LOGEX.
The ultimate goal for the Partnerhsip for Peace country participants in LOGEX is NATO membership. It’s a long road and a lot of work for them, but major progress is being made. In the end I look forward to see the culmination of all their hard work when they participate in the two week exercise in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Maj. Todd J. Morin, U.S. Air Force
EUCOM J4
Logistics Support Division
Multinational Exercise Cell Chief
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Education and water improvements for the children of Bosnia and Herzegovina
U.S. European Command provided $450,000, which allowed the Office of Defense Cooperation to renovate the Drvar school.
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The Face of Security – Can It Be Found In a School Opening?
For much of our Army careers, defining security involved calculating the size of the military force that could be moved to and sustained in a particular area of the world on short notice; the larger the force equating to proportionally more security. However, attendance at two elementary school rededications in Vares and Fojnica, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), lead us to believe that perhaps this definition is far too simple.
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Progress Continues in the Balkans
The good cooperation between NATO, the EU, and the Kosovo Police and Security Forces has been noteworthy. I had a chance to observe a very impressive exercise conducted between the three entities against a mock “riot.” The three layers of response (Kosovo Police, EU, and NATO) reacted properly and smoothly. It is clear that coordination between the local forces and the two external agencies are going well, and we’ll continue to improve on it.
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An Extraordinary Dinner in Berlin
In a small wood-paneled ballroom at the glittering Adlon Hotel of Berlin, a parade of speakers celebrated what is called in German “die Mauerfall” --"the fall of the wall." It came in the 60th year of the NATO Alliance, and was hosted by the Atlantic Council.
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Balkan Dreams
As I fly back from a three day visit of the region, I certainly had ample opportunity to see firsthand all that he describes; yet today, there seems to me to be real hope in the region for cooperation and security alignment, perhaps for the first time in the more than two millenniums of recorded history.
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Phoenix Endeavor - a military spectrum management exercise
You’ve seen quite a few posts here about USEUCOM’s Combined Endeavor (CE) exercise that is currently being conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, and the Netherlands. But what you may not have heard about is Phoenix Endeavor -- also known as PE -- which we believe is the world’s premier international military spectrum management exercise!
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Excellence in Action: Combined Endeavor’s Regional Site in Denmark
This past weekend I had the pleasure of meeting the national delegations at Combined Endeavor 2009’s regional site at Bülows Kaserne, Fredericia, Denmark. Delegations at this site are from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden with additional support personnel from the United States, Austria and Germany.
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Prepping for CE09
Tomorrow, I'll be gathering my gear and moving into my temporary home at Banja Luca, Bosnia-Herzegovina to do my part within EUCOM's Combined Endeavor 09 exercise.
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Connecting Stuttgart to BiH
Well, the Tandbergs worked between here and Stuttgart! What's a Tandberg? It is a point-to-point (or multipoint) teleconferencing tool used by many commercial firms as well as by many nations. The screen looks like a portrait-sized computer screen (in other words, a normal computer screen turned 90 degrees) and there's a camera embedded into the top of the screen. With this tool, individuals can sit at their desk and communicate with any number of others for video conferences.
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Transforming the Main Operating Base
Things are going well as Kozara Barracks is being transformed into a large telecommunications site to support the Main Operating Base of Combined Endeavor 2009 (CE09). We are finalizing contracts, continuing to build the main operating base infrastructure, and installing several networks which will serve as the backbone for our daily communications during the communications interoperability testing. There are as many Bosnia and Herzogovina military support personnel on the ground here as there are members from the CE staff and early participants!
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Bosnia and Herzegovina Prepares for Combined Endeavor 2009
During my recent visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, I saw first hand the great job our BiH partners are doing in Banja Luka as they prepare to host the US European Command’s communications interoperability exercise, Combined Endeavor 2009. The exercise, which will be held from Sep 4-17, is in its 15th year.
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Combined Endeavor 2009
CE – Combined Endeavor – is a large telecommunications exercise sponsored by EUCOM but planned and executed by our partner nations. This year, 2009, we are moving the exercise out of Germany for the first time in our 14 year history to Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a big enough challenge planning this exercise, but this year we add the challenge of building a new infrastructure to support the exercise.
Comments: 2
Congratulations to a great partner nation and logistics team in Montengro.
great initative and making networks/partners before crisis hits...