MANAMA, Bahrain -- U.S. Army Central and the Bahraini defense force co-hosted the second International Air and Missile Defense Symposium in Manama Bahrain March 22 through 26.
The event was the first of its kind to be held in the Gulf region. Leaders attended a scenario-driven exercise, encouraging participants to discuss air and missile defense topics and exchange tactics, techniques and procedures.
The group used the U.S. mission analysis and military decision-making process as their framework during the exercise to determine how to integrate and organize assets in response to an air and missile defense threat.
They talked about what each partner nation's responsibilities are when a threat occurs and how they can improve air defense readiness. Upon completing the exercise, they refined and finalized a course of action for the area of responsibility and presented it to senior leaders.
"I am very impressed with the level of the professionalism and competence of all nations involved and their ability to work together," said Col. William T. Morrow, 32nd Air and Missile Defense Command chief of staff. "Based on the work over the last few days, I'm a better air defense officer."
Col. Mike A. Carter, USARCENT Air and Missile Defense chief, emphasized the importance of the symposium.
"Each country may have different air and missile defense systems, so we need to understand how their systems operate in order to integrate them," Carter said. "We don't fight alone anymore, we fight as a coalition. Together, we will defend our interests, promote regional stability and ensure we have the most capable systems to defeat threats throughout any region."
As he welcomed and introduced senior leaders to the symposium, Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace, USARCENT commander, commented on how the symposium allowed the participants to increase insights on improving air defense readiness and set conditions for future air and missile defense symposiums.
"As a diverse group, we benefit from the differing approaches each nation brings and their unique perspectives toward integrated air and missile defense," said Lovelace. "As a collective body, our continued cooperation will lead us to better solutions than we might devise on our own.
"Just this week, these teams created individual approaches and collaborated to generate one collective solution."
Social Sharing