Thursday, September 20, 2012

High level visitors at Exercise Ramstein Rover 2012

Released on the official Ramstein Rover 2012 website

On 17 and 18 September, German Air Force Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm Ploeger, Deputy Commander of Allied Air Command Ramstein, Germany, visited Exercise Ramstein Rover 2012 or RARO12, the multinational live-fly exercise in the Czech Republic.

RARO12 trains and prepares Forward Air Controllers (FAC) for their deployment to NATO’s ISAF missions in Afghanistan. Another goal of RARO12 is to maintain this critical capability for future Allied operations.

After meeting with the Czech Defence Minister Dr. Alexandr Vondra and a group of Czech senators on Monday, General Ploeger discussed exercise-related issues with the Czech Air Chief, Brigadier General Jiri Verner on Tuesday.

After an introduction to the exercise scenario the general visited the international fighters and helicopters involved in the training and saw FAC teams executing their control runs of aircraft near the Namest Air Base and at Libava range.

During a short press point with local and regional media General Ploeger stated "NATO is extremely grateful to the Czech Republic, the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic and the Czech Air Force for hosting exercise Ramstein Rover 2012, which is the largest NATO air exercise in this year. Namest Air Base provides an excellent venue for three reasons: First, being in the heart of Europe, if you will, it reduces transportation costs for the nations to come here. Second, it is perfectly situated between two military training areas with ranges for us to conduct training. Third, the airbase has excellent facilities available."

Exercise Ramstein Rover 2012 will wrap up this Thursday and both FAC teams and aircraft detachment are scheduled to redeploy to their home bases on Friday.

For more pictures see the gallery "Visitors at Ramstein Rover" under the pictures tab.

Source

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