NATO member countries preparing for a major European military exercise

February 22, 2013 12:34 PM

The NATO member countries will hold a major European exercise in 2015, Minister of Defence Csaba Hende told Hungarian News Agency MTI. He is participating in the two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels which started on Thursday, February 21.

Minister Hende told MTI that the ministers discussed how, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, the member states of the Alliance – and in addition, the NATO partner countries – can maintain a level of cooperation which has been established over the last decade during the joint deployment (interoperability) in Afghanistan.

Photo: nato.int

In order that the lessons learned in Afghanistan will not be lost, the capability of cooperation should be “preserved for a period when the operational tempo will probably be substantially lower than today”, Minister Hende said. He added that to achieve this goal, they must hold more extensive joint exercises in greater numbers than before.

Minister Hende informed MTI that on the first day of the ministerial meeting, the participants reached a consensus about the need for the NATO member states to reinvest in this capability development the resources that would be saved with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Hungarian Minister added that although no sums or figures were discussed, all participants agreed that a large-scale exercise should be held in 2015.

The defence ministers took stock of the progress on the implementation of a package of measures (“Connected Forces Initiative”) approved at last year’s Chicago NATO Summit, which outlines the main directions for the development of NATO forces until 2020.

In a time of financial austerity due to the economic crisis, the North Atlantic Alliance is striving to achieve as much as possible at the lowest possible costs. A good example of this is the Pápa-based Heavy Airlift Wing, which was established by pooling the financial resources of several member states. Speaking about this, Minister Hende noted that French General Jean-Paul Paloméros – NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation who is responsible for the strategic concept of military reform within the Alliance – would soon pay a visit to Pápa.

Hungary is planning to convert the Pápa Air Base into a major NATO aerodrome and at the same time a “multimodal logistic hub”. It intends to open the aerodrome to civil air traffic, and to implement some related infrastructural projects such as the modernization of the main road between Győr and Pápa. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is going to pay a visit to Pápa in this summer.