Exercise Joint Warrior – the need for realistic, live training with multinational defence partners

Fighting forces from nearly 20 NATO countries are gathered off the coast of Scotland this week benefiting from world-class training from the UK and practising their collective response to global crises anywhere in the world. In this blog Captain Andrew Stacey RN writes about the biannual exercise – Joint Warrior – and the unique opportunity it presents for the UK to lead and develop defence cooperation between NATO forces.

Captain Andrew Stacey, RN, Commander of the Joint Tactical Exercise Planning Staff

This weekend I had the privilege of welcoming several hundred sailors, airmen and soldiers from across 18 nations to the latest evolution of the UK-led Exercise Joint Warrior.  

For almost 70 years the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force have, in partnership, generated an exercise that provides realistic world-class and large scale live training.  The enduring success of each Joint Warrior is in part due to the fact that it is international by design, allowing the UK, our allies and partners to regularly train together, enhancing each other’s capabilities and ensuring that when called upon to conduct operations we can all do so rapidly and effectively in the most challenging of environments.

It is through conducting exercises of this scale and complexity that we can be reassured of our collective capability and willingness to safeguard our security.  This Joint Warrior is also unique in that we have not only incorporated two major NATO exercises (Noble Mariner and Noble Arrow) but the Royal Navy has taken an innovative approach in partnership with industry to enable international companies to integrate cutting edge unmanned and autonomous systems with realistic operational scenarios.

Such a complex set of requirements and equipment has required huge efforts by all our international military and industry partners, along with UK agencies and other civilian entities in collectively bringing together all the elements needed to deliver this realistic live training exercise in an effective, safe and environmentally compliant manner.

It is a world first, so as we embark on this next evolution of Joint Warrior I am particularly proud of the UKs ability to deliver world-class training that is much sought after by our NATO allies and partners.  Together we collectively benefit from this investment, maximising our combined readiness to counter a range of current and potential threats.