Spain achieves NATO excellence during Strong Lineage 2025 operational activity carried out in Slovakia

•  As the lead nation for NATO land forces in Slovakia, Spain has demonstrated that it can generate, design and deploy a fully integrated and reliable brigade-type unit capable of taking on the tasks assigned in regional defence plans

Spain has achieved NATO excellence during the Strong Lineage 2025 operational activity carried out in Slovakia.

The implementation of Strong Lineage 25 has included two distinct phases. On the one hand, the ‘verification’ phase, which began on 6 June and ended today, with the final report communicating the excellent results achieved. This phase was conducted by the Capabilities and Force Integration Team (CFIT) under the leadership of NATO's Land Component (LANDCOM).

This was preceded by the ‘integration’ phase, in which all participating units had to be at the Lešť manoeuvring area facilities by 1 June for an intensive preparation programme.

In this context, verification of brigade escalation is governed by NATO standards that include a total of five hundred and eighty (580) criteria that assess the level of capability, readiness and preparedness of deployed forces. These criteria are grouped under such diverse headings as command and control (including communications and information systems), manoeuvre, fire support, air defence, NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) protection, intelligence, strategic projection, civil-military cooperation, health protection and logistic sustainment capability.

The genesis of this Strong Lineage 25 operational activity began many months ago with the generation of the necessary personnel and assets as part of comprehensive planning to execute the escalation to brigade status of the forces permanently deployed in Slovakia - a Battle Group entity - and thus achieve NATO validation.

Once this preliminary process was completed, the strategic projection was carried out from Spain and the other participating countries to Slovakia, with the most demanding 10-day alert level. In the case of Spain, the assets were transported by sea to Slovenia, from where they moved - through three countries - to the training area in Lešť. To complete the strategic projection, the personnel flew to Bratislava.

Until the launch of Operation Strong Lineage 25, the education and training programme has been very intensive. In June 2024, Spain assumed the Framework Nation role in Slovakia; since then, three Battle Groups have successfully passed their NATO Combat Ready Evaluation (CREVAL), ensuring a solid foundation for the brigade-level expansion of the Battle Group deployed permanently in Slovakia under Spanish leadership.

The expansion or escalation process is a real operation for all  purposes, designed to verify that the Brigade can make a strategic move, deploy and be ready, if necessary, ‘to be employed at the earliest possible moment’ in defence of NATO's eastern flank.

In this edition of the Strong Lineage 25 operational rehearsal, sufficient brigade capabilities have been deployed to validate the concept, but not yet in its entirety. From now on, each contingent will build up its efforts until it is in a position to deploy the multinational brigade in 2027 with all its units, materials and capabilities.

As General Alfonso Pardo de Santayana Galbis - head of the ‘Galicia’ Brigade VII-BRILAT and acting head of the Multinational Brigade deployed in Slovakia - points out, Operation Strong Lineage 25 has been ‘an enormous challenge, but also a magnificent opportunity to improve our capabilities and our operability’. By extension, a challenge for all the Armed Forces and for Spain, whose ‘weight as a nation on the international stage is measured by the effort it is capable of making for the benefit of the whole’.

NATO's military presence on the Alliance's Eastern Front is a key element of the Alliance's enhanced deterrence and defence commitment, which has grown in recent years to reflect the new security reality in the Euro-Atlantic area. The forward presence of allied forces is defensive, proportionate, transparent and in line with the Alliance's international commitments and obligations.