SLUNJ, Croatia - More than 1400 participants from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, the United Kingdom and the United States took part in the opening ceremony for Immediate Response 15, here on Sept. 9, 2015.
Immediate Response 15 is a 13-day multinational, brigade-level, command post and tactical field training exercise running from September 9 through 22, 2015. The exercise is designed to improve NATO interoperability and spans across both Croatia and Slovenia.
During the ceremony at Eugen Kvaternik Military Training Area, paratroopers from the 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade, along with soldiers from the Croatian Mechanized Battalion, Guards Armored Mechanized Brigade; the Slovenian 132nd Mountain Regiment, 1st Brigade; the Bosnian 1st Battalion, 4th Brigade; the Albanian 2nd Battalion, Red Forces Brigade and the Macedonian Special Operations Regiment integrated their formations to form a multinational battalion, underscoring partnership and cooperation.
"This exercise started in 2005 as a train up to a deployment in Afghanistan," said U.S. Army Col. William Glaser, the exercise's co-director and director of the 7th Army's Joint Multinational Simulations Center. "It grew from there to incorporate more multinational partners and increasing levels of complexity to get to where it is now. Training in Croatia and Slovenia affords us a unique opportunity to promote regional stability and security while strengthening mutual trust and interoperability."
His co-director, Croatian army Col. Denis Tretinjak, commander, Guards Armored Mechanized Brigade, concurred and addressed the combined formation on building partner capacity to plan, prepare and execute joint and combined training in a real-time, realistic setting.
"[Our] tasks become more complex and uncertain with every day, and the only way to successfully respond to those challenges is to build strong and effective coalitions, especially through security cooperation," said Tretinjak. "In addition to technical interoperability, I am confident that the Immediate Response 15 will successfully continue to influence the human interoperability dynamic."
At the close of the ceremony, the allied troops shared a meal together and embarked to town for a cultural experience to further cement the allied bonds that should prove vital in this exercise and future operations.
The 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, is the U.S. Army Contingency Force in Europe, providing ready forces anywhere in the U.S., European, Africa and Central Commands areas of responsibility within 18 hours.
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