ENHANCED FORWARD PRESENCE IV

The Heads of State and Governments of the Atlantic Alliance, in the last Warsaw Summit, agreed to develop the Welsh agreement by putting into action a concerted response which can adapt to the challenges coming from both the East and the South.

As part of this response and with the objective of increasing deterrence on the eastern flank of the alliance, NATO has designed an Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP), in respect of the NATO-Russia  Founding Charter and which is part of the assurance measures in allied territory which was approved in the Welsh Summit and defined in the Warsaw Summit.

The Enhanced Forward Presence is defensive, multinational, based on voluntary contributions, interoperable, and able to deploy in the Baltic states and Poland.

The EFP entity is established in four ‘Battle Groups’ (BG) led by the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. The Spanish participation will be with the Canadian led BG, which will deploy to Latvia.

On the 15th of January, the fourth handover by a Spanish contingent in the EFP was carried out. The EFP IV contingent, whose chief is the Lieutenant Colonel Luis Manuel Benéitez Martínez, is principally comprised of staff from the 1st Aragon Brigade and the 41st Logistic Support Group (AALOG to use its Spanish acronym). This contingent took over from the previous one, which was mostly made up of 7th ‘Guadarrama’ Brigade, which had been in Latvian territory since last July.

The manoeuvre unit is organized around a Mechanised Sub-Task Force which is made up of units with armoured vehicles, with six Leopard 2E armoured tanks, 14 Pizarro infantry combat vehicles and various M-113 armoured personnel transports, which allows the unit to carry out the missions with which it has been entrusted.