GRAFENWOEHR, Germany - Albania participates with 38 other nations at Combined Endeavor 11, a multinational exercise from Sept. 8-22, 2011 in Grafenwoehr, Germany.

The goal of the exercise is to improve North American and European military communications, and computer network inter-connectivity to help nations partner together in responding to regional crisis or disaster.

Albanian army Cmdr. Tonin Gjini said participating in Combined Endeavor is very important for many things. First, the most important to us is to test the level of interoperability between Albanian communication information systems and other nations. Secondly, we identify Albanian CIS interoperability gaps and to develop solutions for them. Thirdly, we familiarize with new systems and equipments of other participating nations and based on them we create a design vision for the future Albanian CIS.

Fourthly, we get the opportunity to train new people on new systems and technologies. Finally, Albania gets the chance to increase capabilities with information assurance and cyber defense. Combined Endeavor is more then just a technical exercise. There is another key goal to the exercise, human interoperability.

“Combined Endeavor is very successful yearly with the human interoperability. Human interoperability means that we are from different countries, we have different flags and uniforms, but we are one at Combined Endeavor,” said Gjini.

“It is so important because here we have the opportunity to learn by each other, and to help each other,” said Gjini.

Human interoperability provides more opportunities for nations to learn about each others equipment and how they use them.

“We learn from other nations everything about the new C2 systems, or HF equipment. Also every year we host a Albania and USMC night,” said Gjini.

“Last year we had some technical problems with our routers, so we requested Italian engineers to help us to solve the problems and after two hours of working together everything was fixed and worked perfectly,” said Gjini.