Last Thursday night, as a guest of Major General Konstantinos Koutras of Greece and with coordinating support from the German, Dutch and United States’ militaries – MDAA, true to its mission and on behalf of its charter and membership, recognized and honored five individuals from the German Luftwaffe, the Royal Netherlands Air Force and the United States Army for excellence in leadership over the three day live firings of 46 interceptors at the NATO Missile Firing Installation (NAMFI) in Crete. MDAA also extended this recognition and honor to the best units and their commanders as a team with an excellent performance during these firings from each of the participating four countries of Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. This champion event – with a stunning dusk setting – brought dignity, respect and elevated the recognition at the conclusion of all of the firings, with two facing Patriot Launchers as a back drop and a U-shaped 700-man NATO Ally formation, led by the German Brigadier General Michael Gschossmann and his Brigade Commander Colonel Arnt Kuebart, commander of the German Air Defense Wing 1. With foreign dignitaries looking on, it was a unification of a team that bonded together, trusted, depended on and achieved with each other to surpass challenges and achieve tremendous confidence in executing the complex engagements of live firings for the air and missile defense mission of NATO. A unified air and missile defense team is the future and the genius of capacity and partnership building amongst NATO Allies to exponentially force project their mission while sharing the burden of resourcing and implementing this tremendous capability.

With resilience to overcome the challenges of power failure, radar malfunction, missile performance, and different crews on different platforms – the tremendous success of launching 46 interceptors to intercept air breathing cruise missiles and aircraft threats, as well as short-range tactical ballistic missiles during the three days of firing, made the Alliance stronger and confidence to win the fight an absolutely invaluable experience.

Great credit goes to the Greek Commander, MG Koutras, of the Firing Range of NAMFI, for nowhere in the world would a military firing range, in prescribed launch windows, get an unscheduled extended launch window and granted an immediate permission to shut down an international airport in order to adjust, provide new targets, and complete additional firings. Credit also goes to the leadership of the US 10th AAMDC commander Col. Janell Eickhoff who made the decision to fire the remaining interceptors and request additional targets once the launch window was reopened.

It takes trust in the team, belief in the team, and a team will to overcome and win. This team is the NATO air and missile defense team, and with its operators, logisticians, maintenance, firing crews, command and control from these four member contributing air and missile defense countries it is led by Germany.  A great team has leadership amongst its teammates and a leader that can bring them together through trust, vision and most of all credibility of action. Germany led out front, having three of the five Patriot fire units fire all 30 of its Patriot Interceptors successfully and hosted two of the three United States crews on their firing units.  Germany also has a Surface to Air Missile Operations Centre (SAMOC), a proven working command and control system that interconnects different systems from different countries – from sensors to shooters, to even include left over Russian systems from the Eastern European members of NATO. Germany led the force capacity coupling with Netherlands in announcing the IOC of their air and missile defense task force last Wednesday at Crete. (Link to the last Alert, “What Happened in Crete”)

NATO will look to Germany’s industrial strength, coupled with the leadership of the Chancellor Angela Merkel to be the foundation of capability in the air and missile defense requirement for the NATO Response Force (NRF) and the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).

It is now time for NATO – in response to increased demonstrated and modernized UAS, Cruise Missile and Ballistic Missile threats – to provide an Air and Missile Defense Command to NATO, a center of excellence and school house for this mission, and a collaborative effort to modernize air defenses for NATO.  It is now time for Germany to step up and lead this effort as the lead contributor.

German BG Gschossmann awarding American SPC Justin Shultz of the 5-7 ADA.
(Photo Credit: 10th AAMDC Flikr Page.)

German BG Gschossmann addressing the formation.
(Photo Credit: Staff Sergeant Nurguen Ekmekcibasi of the German Air Force.)

German, Dutch, Greek, and American award winners.
(Photo Credit: Staff Sergeant Nurguen Ekmekcibasi of the German Air Force.)