Airmen prepare Romanian base for exercise

MIHAIL KOGALNICEANU AIRFIELD, Romania — It is springtime in Romania where dishes and antennae are sprouting up at an airfield here that is developing into a multinational web of communication in preparation for exercise Combined Endeavor 2005.

Activity at the airfield, which is the forward-deployed location for the exercise, is gaining momentum as planes and buses bring in participants from 43 countries to observe how information traffic flows using various transmission systems. Communication testing is scheduled for May 13 to 25 between here and Lager Aulenbach, Germany, officials said.

Combined Endeavor 2005 is a U.S. European Command-sponsored exercise designed to identify and document command, control, communications and computer interoperability among NATO and Partnership for Peace nations. The objective is to enable partner nations to conduct future humanitarian, peacekeeping and disaster relief operations more effectively, officials said.

Air Force Master Sgt. Al Domingo, site superintendent for the 1st Combat Communications Squadron from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, said his team is installing what could be described as the "backbone" for the communications during Combined Endeavor.

There are 25 people from his unit here pounding stakes, setting tents, scaling towers and connecting cables, and they are not alone. France, Canada and Romania are just a few of the countries preparing communication equipment for testing.

About 1,200 service members and civilians will conduct more than 1,400 tests, including satellite communications, video teleconferencing, voice over Internet protocol, and single-channel radio networking.