Exercise Anakonda 2016 Is Under Way with 31,000 Troops from 24 Participating Nations

Exercise Anakonda 2016 has been planned fully in line with the decisions taken at the NATO Wales Summit held in 2014, and is being conducted on the basis of articles 4 and 5 of the Washington Treaty on collective defence operations. The training audience are practicing and developing an already existing NATO capability – the strategic-level decision making process of high-readiness forces. On this year’s largest-scale NATO exercise, the Hungarian Defence Forces are represented by the command group and headquarters of the HDF 25th “Klapka György" Infantry Brigade as well as by nominated subunits from the HDF 2nd Special Forces Regiment.

The main objective of the exercise is to provide all participants with opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of operational planning and command in a multinational environment, in cooperation with allied forces. Beyond the tasks of taking collective action against hybrid warfare, great emphasis is placed on high-intensity conventional operations in the interest of increasing and improving response capabilities.

The command post exercise (CPX) focuses on operational planning, command and control in a virtual space, i.e. in the environment of a computer-assisted simulation. The missions assigned to the forces include preventing a war of expansion waged by a fictitious enemy country, repulsing the attack and liberating occupied areas.

During the exercise, the staff of the Hungarian headquarters are executing their tasks as role-players in a brigade assigned to a US division, which means that they follow the commander’s guidelines while performing command and control of military operations and reacting to exercise injects/incidents.

Photo: Lt. Diána Vizinger