NATO will conduct the largest air defense exercise since its inception in Germany between June 12 and June 23, involving 10,000 troops and 220 aircraft from 25 countries.
The exercise, called Air Defender 2023 (AD23), is coordinated by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and will participate in it from Sweden and Japan, two countries that are not part of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Also participating are Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Slovenia, United States, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, Romania and Turkey.
“We want to demonstrate the agility and speed of the air force and show the air power of NATO as a first response,” said the Luftwaffe commander.Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, quoted in an Atlantic Alliance publication.
This has been stated by the German official During the exercise, 100 aircraft from the United States will fly in Europe to emphasize that the transatlantic dimension is “solid evidence of NATO’s cohesion and solidarity”.
NATO’s largest air defense exercise is taking place in the middle of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which was started by Moscow on February 24, 2022.
NATO countries have supplied Ukraine’s armed forces with weapons to fight Russian forces in what Moscow sees as a “proxy war” being waged by the West against Russia.
The cooperation of participating countries in AD23 “enables a credible deterrence against a potential aggressor,” said the head of the Luftwaffe.
The exercise takes place against the background of the fictional invasion of Germany by special forces of the Brückner organization and other troops of the eastern military alliance OCCASUS (occaso, in Portuguese), after years of confrontation with NATO.
Russia, which led the Warsaw Pact military alliance during the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the West, has deployed a private military organization, the Wagner Group, to fight in Ukraine.
Led by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, the Wagner Group spearheaded the battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, considered the longest and bloodiest since the start of the war.
In the fictional AD23 scenario, air and ground forces from the east control about a quarter of the country and try to penetrate the Baltic Sea and capture the port of Rostock (north).
“As a result, the Western alliance is initiating a defense state [coletiva do território da aliança] according to Article 5 of the NATO treaty,” according to the exercise scenario released by the Luftwaffe.
Article 5 states that an armed attack on a NATO member state in Europe or the United States is an attack on all NATO countries and may provoke a collective response.
The treaty was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949 by the 12 founding countries of NATO, including Portugal, which did not participate in the AD23 exercise.
Troops and aircraft participating in AD23 will be stationed in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
“Participants practice Composite Air Operations in training areas over Germany and conduct so-called round-trip missions to the Baltic States and Romania,” NATO said.
The three air exercise areas, in the east, north and south of Germany, will only be used at different altitudes for two to four hours a day and will be closed to civil air traffic during these periods for safety reasons.
“Aircraft noise cannot be completely avoided. Exercises such as Air Defender 23 are an important part of military training and a prerequisite for the German Air Force and its allies to fulfill the mission in national and allied defense,” the Luftwaffe said.
Source: DN
