Blog Posts tagged with "Ministry of Defense"

As promised in February, welcome to another edition of LOGEX 10. This month’s events find me at the National Support Element (NSE) & Logistics Functional Area Services (LOGFAS) workshop in the Czech Republic, which is the second in a series of five workshops designed for each participating nation in this year’s exercise.

Warrant Officer Martin Turner (RAF), Allied Command Transformation, provides instruction on LOGFAS.

The first workshop was in Poland last month, so Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania will follow in the coming weeks/months. The purpose of the workshop is to develop NATO national Detailed Deployment Plans (DDPs) for use at the Final Reception, Staging and Onward Movement (RSOM) Workshop in July. These workshops familiarize the participants with roles and responsibilities that they will encounter as members of a deployed NATO staff such as Deployment Contracting, RSOM, and the overall LOGFAS system; which is a term for a suite of NATO supply and transportation systems, and used as common planning tools during NATO-led operations. Make sense…?

These workshops are efficiently ran by Mr. Pete Venoit, USJFCOM J7 Exercise Director, who has a small team of subject matter experts from Allied Command Transformation (ACT) and the NATO School in Oberammergau, Germany who provide instruction that prepares students to produce the products required for execution. The DDP produced here will be consolidated with the other four participating nations and refined during the final workshop in July. The final product will be agreed upon and utilized during the exercise execution in September of this year.

Czech Republic NSE/LOGFAS Workshop Attendees, April 12-16, 2010.

Workshops are typically designed to be a bi-lateral effort between the U.S. and the participating nation, but it is also a great opportunity for our friends in NATO and Partnership for Peace (PfP) nations to observe these events to see how they are designed and benefit MOD General Staff and Joint Staff functions. We are fortunate to have with us this week MAJ Velimir Obradovic from Montenegro, LTC Damir “Dado” Radocaj from Croatia, and LTC Pete Williams from the United Kingdom. The goals of observer nations are to either learn more about how the training program is designed so they may one day participate or host, or observe the finer details of the course so that they may develop their own exercise. For example, Montenegro is currently scheduled to host LOGEX 12, Croatia is looking to eventually establish a similar LOGEX –type event, and the UK is showing great interest in becoming a mentor nation within the LOGEX series. So there’s lots of goodness here and many more opportunities ahead.

I must admit that the historic and majestic landscape of Prague frequently lures me to the window, and the fact that five of the “1,000 places to see before you die” are in Prague, makes me even more intrigued, but I digress. I would be remiss if I did not say how pleased we are with our colleagues and gracious host from the Czech Republic MOD. LTC Karel Zapletal is doing a marvelous job at orchestrating these events, so our hats are off to him and his team.

That just about does it for the Czech Republic workshop. I will be in Bulgaria the week of April 19-23 for another workshop, and as all workshops are designed the same; this will be my last update until July for the Final Workshop in Romania. Until then…

Nazdravi!
MAJ Matt Williams
U.S. European Command Logistics Directorate (ECJ4)