North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
September 15, 2014
NATO NATIONS AND PARTNERS PLAN AND EXERCISE CRISIS OPERATIONS AT THE STRATEGIC LEVEL
SHAPE, Mons, Belgium: Between 15–26 September 2014, STEADFAST PYRAMID and STEADFAST PINNACLE 2014 will be conducted by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Riga, Latvia. It will bring together NATO’s newly appointed senior personnel and selected staff to establish a common benchmark level of understanding about NATO’s operations planning processes.
Exercises Steadfast Pyramid and Pinnacle serve as building blocks in the preparation of ACO commanders and their staffs by exercising command and control during the planning, preparation and conduct of current and future operations.
“These exercises are excellent examples of NATO’s enduring commitment to our Baltic members”, said General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, adding, “One of the outcomes of the recent NATO Summit in Wales is that nations have once again reaffirmed their commitment to fulfil all three of the core tasks set out in our Strategic Concept: collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security, the first of which, collective defence, has acquired a renewed relevance in view of recent security developments to the East of NATO.”
Exercises are a pivotal part of NATO’s Planning Cycle, as such they allow for the development of a plethora of work strands from operational capabilities to effective force integration. As a result of the Ukraine crisis, the North Atlantic Council has approved a package of immediate assurance measures to reinforce Alliance cohesion and support for collective defence. To which exercise Steadfast Pyramid and Pinnacle are very much at the forefront of this new initiative.
“In the current security situation, it is more than important as ever before that NATO top military leadership enhances analytical, planning and decision making skills by challenging themselves within exercise scenarios and issues that are actual in the arena of contemporary security policy”, says Raimonds Vējonis, Minister of Defence of the Republic of Latvia.
While adopting operations to better build security, the current NATO Command Structure remains robust, agile and able to undertake all elements of effective command and control for simultaneous challenges.
The training audience will consist of 47 participants from 15 countries, including Finland and Sweden. Using the Crisis Operational Planning Directive, they will develop plans to solve a realistic collective defence problem. This manner extends the staff’s appreciation of what the commander is responsible for, as well as the importance of staff assessments and advice to the commander.
For the first time since 2011, exercise Pinnacle will play host to the Commander of the Latvian National Guard, as a participant.
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