North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
November 8, 2013
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Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
November 7, 2013
Steadfast Jazz13: “the crucial building blocks for the implementation of the Connected Forces Initiative plan”
LTC Emmanuel DOSSEUR, SACT Public Affairs Advisor
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), French Air Force General Jean-Paul Paloméros, was in Poland November 7th, after a short visit to Latvia, for the Steadfast Jazz Exercise 2013 (SFJZ13).
This is a significant exercise for NATO, with the participation of 3,000 personnel in the Computer Assisted and Command Post exercise, and 3,000 personnel for the live exercise. General Paloméros said, that SFJ13 is “the perfect example of the constitution of the crucial building blocks for the implementation of the Connected Forces Initiative plan. This is also a milestone towards the High Visibility Exercise Trident Juncture in 2015″. SFJZ13 exemplifies “a new era” where ACT “assumes responsibility for planning aspects of collective training and exercises, while ACO sets the requirements, evaluates and certifies the outcomes”.
SACT stressed that following the NATO Command structure reform, “we are now in a situation where we must train, exercise, and certify” not only a leaner NATO Command Structure but also the NATO Force Structure, “on which we will rely more extensively”. The main interest of SFJ13 is that “we will draw lessons from this exercise, with a collaborative and pragmatic approach to meet the [member] nations’ needs, to fine tune our defence planning process and to improve our level of interoperability for our chain of command and forces,” SACT added.