Exercise Collaborative Effort II Launched

The students of the Joint Command and General Staff Course (JCGSC) and the Civil Servant Course (CSC) are in the middle of Exercise Collaborative Effort II which started on Monday, 19th of March and will last for three weeks until 5th of April.

During the Exercise, 55 students of JCGSC and CSC are supported by 33 BALTDEFCOL Directing Staff members and visiting subject matter experts from various military, civil and academic institutions.

The training audience is divided into two Joint Operational Planning Teams and are tasked to develop a plan for Multinational Joint Peace Support Force (MJPSF) operations using the Zoran Sea scenario.

The Exercise supports learning objectives of almost every teaching module of both the JSGSC and CSC courses. Therefore, the Exercise has the highest priority. The Commander of MJPSF for the Exercise is the Commandant of the College.

During the Operational Planning Process, the JCGSC officers will apply their knowledge of the following topics:

1. Use of Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD)
2. Capabilities and employment of the components
3. Operational level command and control principles
4. Functional contributions to the operational level planning
5. Media handling.

This year, the Exercise Collaborative Effort II has a number of innovations. One of the most important is the participation of the Air and Land Component representatives from Multinational Corps North East. Contribution of the functional NATO component level HQ adds a significant sense of reality to the Exercise and opens aspects of the parallel planning to the JOPG planners. During the first week and beginning of the second week of the exercise the coordination between Land Component Command (LCC), Air Component Command (ACC) and JOPGs will be done through the Video Tele Conferences (VTC). Component representatives from Szczecin will arrive to Tartu on 28th of April.

The first day of the Exercise was primarily used for orientation – reception and understanding of the Commander’s Initial Planning Guidelines, distribution of the tasks among the planning teams and the initiation of the geospatial factor analysis.

During the second day, planners were synchronising their knowledge regarding the Zoran Sea Region, identifying the priorities for further analysis and preparing for the first VTC session with MNC-NE.