Vice Chief of the Army Staff spends a day immersed in ‘Trident Juncture’

The Vice Chief of the Army Staff, Lieutenant General Juan Campins Miralles, travelled to Zaragoza on 23 October to collect first-hand information about Exercise ‘Trident Juncture’ 2015.

Upon his arrival to the “San Jorge” base in the company of the commander of the Land Force, Lieutenant General Francisco J. Varela, the Vice Chief of the Army Staff was welcomed by Lieutenant General Rafael Comas, chief of the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps in Spain (NRDC HQ-SP), which will lead the Land Component Command (LCC) of the NATO Response Force (NRF) in 2016.

Lieutenant General Comas, chief of the Army command post, gave a presentation on Trident Juncture and the concept of Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). This Force is composed of three brigades, one of which is made up of members of the 7th Light Infantry Brigade “Galicia”. In addition, at the Operations Centre of LCC HQ its chief, General Fernando García Vaquero, explained its working to the visitors.

Next the group attended a videoconference between Lieutenant General Comas and the chiefs of the four Brigades subordinate to LCC, which come from Spain, Canada, the UK and Italy. Then they visited the Communications & Information Systems (CIS) area of the LCC command post, where they found out about the CIS structure of the exercise and cyberdefence.

Later the Vice Chief of the Army Staff and the commander of the Land Force got on an all-terrain vehicle to go to the “Tres Poyetes” observatory at the “San Gregorio” training centre, where the chief of BRILAT, General Luis Cebrián, made a presentation about VJTF and the tactical exercise they were about to witness. In the course of the latter, a Tactical Group carried out a live fire offensive against a simulated target in the “Puig Amarillo” area.

The Vice Chief of the Army Staff during his visit (Photo: Á.G.Tejedor/DECET)