NATO — Exercises Cooperative Longbow and Cooperative Lancer 2012

MADRID, SPAIN — NATO will con­duct exer­cis­es Coop­er­a­tive Long­bow and Coop­er­a­tive Lancer 2012 dur­ing the peri­od 21 to 29 May 2012 in the for­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia^*. Plan­ning for these exer­cis­es began in spring 2011 with the aim of improv­ing inter­op­er­abil­i­ty between NATO and part­ner coun­tries, with­in the frame­work of Part­ner­ship for Peace program. 

Exer­cis­es Coop­er­a­tive Long­bow and Coop­er­a­tive Lancer aim is to edu­cate, train and exer­cise del­e­ga­tions of select­ed part­ner nation armed forces in order to pro­mote inter­op­er­abil­i­ty with NATO land forces. Coop­er­a­tive Long­bow 2012 and Coop­er­a­tive Lancer 2012 include par­tic­i­pa­tion from 13 part­ner nations with approx­i­mate­ly 1.000 troops. 

Par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries are: 

• Armenia
• Aus­tria
• Azer­bai­jan
• Belarus
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• The for­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia^*
• Geor­gia
• Kaza­khstan
• Moldo­va
• Mon­tene­gro
• Ser­bia
• Switzer­land
• Ukraine

The plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, con­duct and eval­u­a­tion of the exer­cise will fol­low a coop­er­a­tive, inte­gra­tive and iter­a­tive man­age­ment approach to meet the require­ments of the Alliance and those of Part­ner nations to the high­est degree possible. 

Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Alfre­do CARDONA TORRES (ESP Army), Com­man­der Allied Force Com­mand Madrid, is the Offi­cer Con­duct­ing the Exer­cise while Brigadier Gen­er­al Gio­van­ni SAVARESE (ITA Army) is NATO Co-Direc­tor for the Exer­cise in close coop­er­a­tion with Colonel Sin­isha STAMENOV, Co-Direc­tor from the Army of the for­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Macedonia*. 

Exer­cise Coop­er­a­tive Long­bow is an exer­cise designed to train a brigade-lev­el head­quar­ters oper­at­ing with­in the frame­work of a NATO Cri­sis Response Operation. 

Exer­cise Coop­er­a­tive Lancer is a train­ing exer­cise whose aim is to improve capa­bil­i­ties in select­ed tac­ti­cal tasks in sup­port of cri­sis pre­ven­tion, con­flict res­o­lu­tion and post-con­flict peace building. 

The sce­nario for both exer­cis­es, LONGBOW and LANCER, is based on a fic­ti­tious Unit­ed Nations-man­dat­ed, NATO-led Cri­sis Response Operation. 

Two Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tions, the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross (ICRC) coop­er­ate help­ing us to cre­ate a more real­is­tic sce­nario. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for these two orga­ni­za­tions will be post­ed in the cell tasked to influx inci­dences relat­ed to their specialties. 

The train­ing will be con­duct­ed in the Kriv­olak mil­i­tary train­ing area, locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 100km south-east from Skop­je, the for­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Macedonia. 

Part­ner­ship for Peace is a pro­gramme launched in 1994 and is based on prac­ti­cal bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion between an indi­vid­ual coun­try and NATO. It allows Part­ner Coun­tries to build rela­tion­ships with NATO, choos­ing their own pri­or­i­ties for coop­er­a­tion. The pur­pose of the Part­ner­ship for Peace pro­gramme is to: 

a. Increase sta­bil­i­ty
b. Build con­fi­dence
c. Dimin­ish threats to peace
d. Build strength­ened secu­ri­ty relationships.

The com­plex­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al crises requires a com­pre­hen­sive and region­al approach where all the actors of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty (NATO, UN) play their part of the game in coop­er­a­tion with key region­al players. 

^* Turkey recog­nis­es the Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia with its con­sti­tu­tion­al name 

Source:
Allied Com­mand Oper­a­tions
NATO