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.

The Combined Endeavor series of exercises are more workshop, display and information exchange than tactics, techniques and troop management. Combined Endeavor -- CE for short -- allows communicators from all over Europe, as well as Canada, the United States, a once-yearly opportunity to test out, experiment, and share communications breakthroughs with their counterparts. When a disaster occurs is the wrong time to figure out that one nation's "commo gear" can't talk with another's. Or that one has to have two, three, or even four phone "devices" around because for some reason there was no coordination to share simple things like phone directories, emergency radio frequencies, push-to-talk numbers, and emergency beeper numbers among those who needed them beforehand. We Americans experienced this back during the aftermath of "9-11" in New York City and later after a series of hurricanes in our southern United States destroyed much of several of our largest coastal cities.

THAT is what CE is really all about: figuring out before disaster occurs, how best to communicate between nation's basic communication systems; is there anything on the horizon better than what we're using and how does it work -- and CAN IT WORK with systems which were purchased back in the 80s? In the 60s? In the 40s? It goes a little bit further than that.

Let's say supposedly, country "X" is fielding a new communications system and there's only one or two people in their country who knows anything about that system. Country "Y" remembers their own growing pains from their experiences with that system four years ago. The two countries can get together on their own, sure, and exchange people, information and equipment between each other. However, it's a lot better to do that exchange whereby other nations surrounding them can see how tough fielding the new equipment can be and how much support there is for that equipment to be taught during something like CE.

That too, is what CE is about. There's no firing ranges, no explosions (we hope!), no fighting. A simple exchange of information, resources, tools and techniques geared to get everyone "speaking together", maybe not with one voice but with the capability to hear and talk with one another.

As the public affairs officer for the exercise, my emphasis will be in part on communication with others as well. This blog, for instance, will be used by participants and leadership of CE09 to talk and listen to all of you about this important exercise. In addition, I will be posting daily images and video collected from our "media operations center" to further illustrate the importance of the exercise and how it's a great use of EUCOM's valuable capital - human and financial. I will also post content on world-wide internet resources like Facebook and Flikr, again so that those in other nations as well as our "home team audiences" can see and understand a bit more about CE09 and it's place as a EUCOM value-added program.

I am thrilled to be able to share my experiences with all of you while I'm there. But I'm not going to be the ONLY one you'll "hear" from, trust me. We have people within the communications community (the people who REALLY know their stuff with regard to the outcomes of this event) on tap to share with you their impressions and thoughts about the exercise and it's progress. I will also be reaching out to my Bosnia-Herzegovina counterparts and asking them to post here as well. I trust that through our social media and traditional media methods, that you will talk with us about the exercise too.

Combined Endeavor is a EUCOM-sponsored communications interoperability exercise. For the first time, a Partnership for Peace nation will be hosting the main effort. I am happy to be a part of the effort as one of the last events on my "performance calendar" under my current set of orders to EUCOM's public affairs directorate. I look forward in sharing my impressions and thoughts with all of you -- through this blog, products produced here, and items posted to EUCOM's Facebook and Flikr (a photo sharing site), and follow us on Twitter at #EUCOM.

LTC Mike Walton
U.S. European Command Public Affairs