Supporting in Stavanger
To support the exercise, CIS Support Unit (CSU) Stavanger hosted an additional 400 Eurocorps exercise participants, and more than 700 Exercise Control and Response Cell staff.
Eurocorps will control NRF land forces in 2020, and the Exercise Control and Response Cell staff emulated enemy forces and assessed the training audiences.
The Bulgarian CIS Battalion, part of the NATO Communication and Information Systems Group (NCISG), deployed from Bulgaria to provide the CIS at Stavanger for Eurocorps. They connected the training audience to the NATO Secret backbone.
For this exercise, the Battalion deployed its major deployable point of presence, the Dragonfly HQ08.
"The Dragonfly HQ08 was deployed by the Bulgarian team at the JWC within 18 working hours," said MAJ Kaloyan Stoyanov, Commander for the Bulgarian CIS Battalion.
CSU Stavanger was responsible for supporting the Exercise Control staff and the JWC.
“This exercise significantly challenged the CSU Staff, as they are responsible for ensuring the reliability of the CIS infrastructure," said CSU Stavanger Commander Tommy Reiestad. "Their skills were essential when firefighting any IT system problems that could influence the ution of the exercise. Again, it reminded us of the importance of having good NCI Agency staff available during high-intensity events like Trident Jupiter exercise."
Embarking the USS Mount Whitney
Another customer supported by the NCI Agency was Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO), which embarked the USS Mount Whitney for the exercise.
"The NCI Agency is a long-known, very reliable partner for STRIKFORNATO," said Commander Juergen Peter, Assistant Chief of Staff J6 for CIS. "With decades of experience built up in former organizations within NATO, the Agency has a huge reputation of IP networking and providing services to different customers."
The US Command 6th Fleet (C6F) funded the NATO Command and Control services presence on the USS Mount Whitney. Preparation and support to TRJU19 was co-funded by C6F and STRIKFORNATO.
The Agency created plans for how STRIKFORNATO would best connect to other training audiences, and defined a baseline for the needed services. The Agency also provided any extra IT equipment needed beyond what was already at the command.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from the Agency also joined the ship during the build-up phase to support setting up and validating the services. Once the exercise began, SMEs on-board were able to immediately respond to any IT challenges.
"This is the highest level of ambition you can train for, and as for C2 and IT, it is by far the most challenging setup," Commander Peter said of Trident Jupiter. "It is very demanding, from the planning, through the build-up, to the ution, and calls for everybody's concentration and commitment."
Commander Peter concluded that the objectives were achieved.
"As IT specialists we are all one team together with NCI Agency, and it is a team effort to enable operations and exercises," Commander Peter said. "The team has again proven its capabilities!"