Some
120 military personnel from Austria, Germany, and the US are in the midst of
building up a “tent city” at Zaragoza AB, Spain, which will eventually serve as
a NATO Joint Task Force Headquarters to support
Exercise
Trident Juncture 2015, the Alliance’s most sprawling and ambitious exercise
since the end of the Cold War, according to
NATO
officials. A total of 392 containers with
equipment arrived at the site in late July, and since then the NATO Exercise
Support Group in charge of the project has worked to make the headquarters
operational by September. Plans for the headquarters were drawn up a year ago
and approved last December, said Royal Navy Lt. Philip Morrison, commander of
the ESG, but implementing the plan during the hot Spanish summer has proved a difficult
task. “We are encountering challenges that we did not anticipate, but the
lessons we learn will be valuable for NATO,” Morrison said. Other locations in
Spain, Italy, and Portugal are preparing for the exercise, but north of
Zaragoza lies the San Gregorio training area, where more road construction and
preparation for the exercise is under way. When complete, 650 staff from NATO
Joint Force Command Brunssum will command and control the exercise—which will
feature some 36,000 troops—when it begins in late September.