President visits NATO training centre
NATO should reset its training programmes to the territorial defence needs of the member states rather than foreign operations, President Bronislaw Komorowski said on Wednesday visiting the NATO Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) in Bydgoszcz, north Poland.
Bronislaw Komorowski told a press conference that the decisions of the recent NATO summit in Newport, Wales, were already bringing the first signs of change in NATO training, which was becoming more geared to defending the Alliance members. This, the president said, was also the effect of the hybrid warfare applied in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to Komorowski "many more impulses were still needed" to reorient the training of NATO forces from foreign missions to territorial defence. He added that Poland intended to encourage the Alliance to carry out comprehensive changes in this respect.
In Bydgoszcz Bronislaw Komorowski met the JFTS staff and watched an IT-simulated helicopter rescue operation. Accompanying the president were National Security Bureau (BBN) head Stanislaw Koziej and deputy Defence Minister Maciej Jankowski.
The NATO Joint Force Training Centre in Bydgoszcz opened on March 31, 2004 as a subsidiary of the NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk, USA. Since 2008 the centre has trained commanding, liaison and advisory staff for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
Source: PAP, president.pl