And especially when it comes to weapons and equipment. During the so-called Air Defender 23 operation, missions are carried out with various aircraft. “It’s like the Dutch national team: you can have good players, but if it’s not a team, it won’t work,” says Cobelens. “That makes this a tricky but important exercise.”
“It’s like the Dutch national team: you can have good players, but if it’s not a team, it won’t work”
While there is a certain NATO standard for procedures, chains of command, maintenance and interchangeable types of ammunition, Cobelens points out that such standards exist mostly on paper. “But it also has to be feasible in practice,” he continues. “We therefore have to work hard to get the plane out of the way at the right time for the right mission in the right combinations.”
Challenge
Defense specialist Peter Wijninga of the Center for Strategic Studies in The Hague supports the challenge outlined by Cobelens. Forming a group of stars is one thing, but eventually there will have to be collaboration, he thinks. “You will see that reality is always cracking, that you always run into problems,” explains Wijninga. “They can be solved after such an exercise. After each mission, there is an extensive debriefing, highlighting the good and bad points. People hope to learn something from this.’
Germany
While the timing of the NATO exercise seems remarkable given the war in Ukraine, it is by no means NATO’s intention to send a signal. Quite the opposite, says Cobelens. The exercise doesn’t officially count as a NATO exercise, “it was invented by the Germans in 2018,” she says. “He always complained that the Germans, given their size and economy, weren’t playing the right role in NATO. So they created the exercise in 2018.’
He therefore believes that the planning of the exercise was prepared even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although he does not deny that it could still have an effect on Russia. “They also see this happening: 25 of the 31 NATO countries with a formidable combination of air force capabilities,” Cobelens continues. (…). ‘It’s about impressing Russia, which is struggling to beat a small country. And on the other hand, when you see so many countries working together like this, Russia might think twice about going down this road.’