Latvia to host exercise of NATO's rapid reaction force this autumn

Latvia is scheduled in October and November to host Arrcade Fusion 15, an exercise staged by the headquarters of the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), the Latvian defense ministry said.

The military exercise, which has been held annually since the ARRC's formation in in the early 1990s, will test the headquarters' "ability to control simulated troop formations within a challenging and dynamic fictional security or humanitarian crisis," the ARRC said on its official website.

Arrcade Fusion 15 provides for the opportunity to merge realistic global security threats into one environment to test headquarters personnel's ability to devise innovative and pragmatic options, it said further.

"This exercise is unique for the ARRC; it is our first time in Latvia and provides an excellent opportunity to deploy and then operate in another NATO country," said ARRC commander Lt. Gen. Tim Evans who visited Latvia in February to inspect the training grounds and Latvia's support capabilities as a host nation.

"My aim is to evaluate our deployability, test key emerging concepts that can be used to develop NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), and strengthen our partnership with our Allies, especially those in the Baltic region," Lt. Gen. Evans explained.

Over the last couple of years, Arrcade Fusion was conducted in the UK, but this year the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps will deploy its headquarters with hundreds of personnel to Latvia, with some elements working concurrently in neighbour the Baltic countries of Lithuania and Estonia.

The ARRC headquarters is now on standby for the next 10 months and is available to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as a responsive and capable headquarters ready to deploy worldwide.

HQ ARRC is a NATO Rapid Deployment Corps headquarters, founded in 1992 in Germany, and headquartered in Gloucestershire since August 2010. Endit