The Spanish F-18 from the Paznic Detachment, located in Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base (Romania), intervened in a multinational NATO-leaded exercise.
This exercise, type Find-Fix-Track-Target (F2T2), was conducted in Polish airspace. F2T2 training exercises employ on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets with the aim of locating targets, notional in this case, and communicating their location to air and ground based systems with a limited time striking capability. This type of training exercises requires a precise coordination among all domains: air, land, sea, space and cyberspace.
The four Spanish F-18 joined sixteen fighters from Poland, USA, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Additionally, those planes were supported by Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and other three air-to-air refuelling tanker aircraft.
Among the ground based units, the 4th Air Support Operations Squadron of the US Air Force participated in the exercise with Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) specialists.
This exercise was an excellent opportunity for rehearsing possible dynamic force utilisation of NATO in European ground; moreover, it allowed the crews to a high readiness status maintenance for multi-domain operations.
With this training exercises, a full integration of different NATO member States is reached. Thus, the security of the eastern flank of the Alliance is strengthened, by means of joint defence and deterrence principles.