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Mar 14 2024

NCI Agency supports NATO LANDCOM's biggest exercise


Exercise Loyal Leda is a land domain tactical-level computer assisted exercise, based on an Article 5 scenario that encompasses a wide range of modern warfare challenges, including cyber domains as well as hybrid warfare.


After a year and a half of meticulous planning, coordination and preparations, the execution phase of Exercise Loyal Leda 2024 took place between 4 and 15 March 2024. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) provided crucial support by deploying new capabilities to ensure all parties were able to fully participate and setting up the necessary network infrastructure to allow secure and efficient communications.

NCI Agency supports NATO LANDCOMtmpAmps biggest exercise

These newly established capabilities mean that these connections are able to be implemented for future exercises and real time operations. These efforts allowed up to 500 participants to connect to NATO networks and successfully engage in Loyal Leda 24.

The Agency's Communications and Information Systems Support Unit (CSU) in Bydgoszcz, Poland, was instrumental in setting up a modern multi-domain and fully federated IT ecosystem for all the participating training audiences. The classified interconnected systems provided services to over 2,500 participants during the exercise.

"CSU Bydgoszcz helped create a digital environment that gave exercise participants from numerous nations the opportunity to enhance their interoperability and be highly prepared for activation of article 5 within the Alliance forces," said Bogdan Stachnik, CIS Event Management from CSU Bydgoszcz. "Our team were on hand to deliver service desk first line support for all exercise participants, and were in support of more than 1,300 end user devices."

The collective efforts of the NCI Agency, including the coordination and cooperation of the Operations and Exercise team prepared the digital environment and readiness required for the exercise to take place.

As the biggest exercise for NATO Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) exercise, Loyal Leda 24 plays an essential role in strengthening LANDCOM and preparing land components to be ready for mission engagement. This exercise constitutes the last exercise before the transition from NATO Reaction Force to a NATO Allied Force Structure, therefore marking an important transformation as the Alliance pivots to a more reactive model.

Photo credits: Exercise Loyal Leda 2022, Joint Force Training Centre