Monthly Archives: March 2015

Polar Plunge: American and Canadian soldiers train in freezing water
Awesome footage of American and Canadian soldiers learning how to survive in freezing Latvian waters. Featuring: 3rd Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment (USA) and 3rd Battalion, The Royal Canadian...

By: NATO

More here:
Polar Plunge: American and Canadian soldiers train in freezing water - Video

At NATOs Allied Land Command on Thursday, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Nicholson was overseeing what only a year ago could have been viewed as just a mundane classroom training exercise.

Nicholson and his command team in Izmir, Turkey, were busy getting a group of military members ready to head out into the field. Not to conduct war games themselves, but to observe alliance armies that were being put to the test.

Our evaluators have to be trained, and thats what were doing this week, Nicholson said in a telephone interview with Stars and Stripes.

But today, such training occurs as NATO is shifting from a decade fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan to confronting security concerns in Europes own backyard, a notion that only a year ago might have been viewed as throwback to the Cold War.

Now, Russian aggression in Ukraine and concerns along NATOs southern flank, where the rise of the Islamic State has parts of Europe on edge, has revitalized the alliance. For NATO Land Command, that means getting the alliances ground forces to work effectively together to respond to any threat or crisis, Nicholson said.

The political guidance has lined up. The military structure is lined up, and the focus and energy is all lined up, Nicholson said. These threats to the stability of the world around us, especially to the east and the south, have clearly energized the political and military leadership of the alliance to enact these improvements to readiness and responsiveness of the alliance.

From Greece and Spain to Turkey and Germany, NATOs Land Command will be spending much of the year dispatching teams of combat evaluators to test the readiness of the alliances ground fighters.

In Izmir this week, NATO military personnel from across the 28-nation alliance have been busy learning skills needed to measure the effectiveness of alliance armies.

A key challenge for the militaries is overcoming communication barriers, Nicholson said difficulties that are less about language and more about technology.

One of the biggest challenge areas is our command-and-control systems and our ability to talk to one another, and this remains a challenge, he said.

Read the original here:
NATO combat readiness to be put to test in 2015

KABUL, Afghanistan A suicide attack struck a NATO coalition convoy in downtown Kabul Thursday morning, killing two people.

At about 8:30 a.m. a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla attacked two vehicles belonging to Turkish members of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission, said Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.

The blast killed at least one Turkish individual and one Afghan civilian bystander, as well as the attacker, he said. The Associated Press, citing the Turkish military, reported that one Turkish soldier was killed and another was wounded in the attack.

Coalition officials confirmed that it was one of their convoys but did not release any information on casualties.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in an online post.

The purpose of today's attack in Kabul was a U.S. convoy, the embassy or any other country nationals were not objective, the groups spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, wrote on Twitter.

The recently appointed NATO civilian representative to Afghanistan, Ismail Aramaz, who is Turkish, had been reported to be the target of the attack. But NATO spokesman Chris Chambers told Stars and Stripes that Aramaz was at his residence, not in the vehicles, at the time of the blast.

The attack occurred deep in the heart of Kabul in an area that hosts the embassies of Turkey and Iran, among other government buildings.

smith.josh@stripes.com Twitter: @joshjonsmith

Read the original post:
NATO coalition convoy struck in Kabul