NOBLE JAVELIN '05

Flight Journal, Aug 2005 by Taurino, Giovanni

NATO'S NOBLE JAVELIN 05 (NJ05) exercise took place from March 28 to April 14, 2005, on Spain's Canary Islands of Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria. Sixteen nations participated in the context of the NATO Response Force (NRF) and included approximately 3,000 personnel from 14 member nations as well as the UK and the U.S. (1,700 land, air and deployed Joint Task Force Headquarters troops, and the rest were ships' crew).

The intent was to create an escalating crisis situation that required NRF deployment to accomplish one or a combination of missions within a realistic, yet fictitious, geopolitical picture. The aim was to improve the expeditionary capability and demonstrate the NRF capability to plan, prepare, deploy, command operations and redeploy within the requisite timelines. Air assets together with the Italian Air Command and Control were deployed to Gando AB on Gran Canada. Simulating recent peace-keeping operations, a multinational headquarters initially coordinated the exercise onboard HMS Invincible and then relocated to Fuerteventura's Puerto del Rosario.

-Text and photo by Giovanni Taurino