In the beginning of this year 1GNC conducted the CRP, which stands for: Crisis Response Planning. It is a process to facilitate decision making at the strategic and operational level in NATO. As Land Component Command at the tactical level we receive our tasking through this process and deliver feedback into it. The result of this process is an Operations Plan on the basis of which the Corps will execute its given mission. This is the first phase of exercise Steadfast Jupiter 2022 (STJU22), which 1GNC will conduct later this year.
The overall aim of a planning process like the CRP is to come up with an executable plan that completes the assignment given to us by the operational level command, in this case Joint Force Command (JFC) Brunssum. It is also the first stage of the Combat Readiness Evaluation (CREVAL) process in which we are evaluated for the role of NATO Response Force Land Component Command (NRF LCC) in 2023. Lastly it aims to uphold or even improve our expertise and experience in planning for a given mission. Again in this case we have built a plan for exercise STJU22, the second phase of the exercise.
In the end 1GNC built an OPLAN for ‘Operation Viking Shield’ a deterrence and potential defense mission situated in Northern Norway. This sets 1GNC to prepare for the execution phase of exercise STJU22.
Challenges
Although the commitment of all the participants within 1GNC was very high, they had to deal with challenges during the process. With limited support of the operation level (Brunssum), 1GNC managed to conduct a successful exercise, but because of real life circumstances, this wasn’t always easy. At first JFC Brunssum paused their work, due to Covid-19 and after that they had to cancel their work because of building tensions in Europe.
1GNC learned that sending liaisons to other participants is beneficial for the quality of the products. Ideally there would have been more involvement of other components in the planning process, but that was not feasible this time because of real life circumstances.
With completion of the CRP 1GNC reached an important milestone on its way to certification for the NRF 23. The headquarters showed that it’s able to produce an executable plan for the land component of the NRF, even in the restrictive circumstances they dealt with. 1GNC is ready to continue preparations for the execution phase of exercise STJU22 which is part of the NRF 23 preparations.