On Monday, NATO launched the largest air force exercises in the alliance’s history, amid rising tensions with Russia over the Ukraine war.
According to Berlin’s military, the drills, called ‘Air Defender 23′ and hosted by Germany, will take place mostly in German airspace between June 12 and 23, with some operations also taking place in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. The drills will feature 10,000 service members and 250 aircraft, with the US fielding 100 of them.
Aside from the United States, the operation would include 24 additional nations, including not just NATO members but also Sweden and Japan. The exercises’ goal is to improve and deepen collaboration among participating countries, including plans to replicate a NATO Article 5 support scenario. The latter provision, which is central to the US-led bloc, states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all of them.
Amy Gutmann, US Ambassador to Germany, stated that she “would be pretty surprised if any world leader was not taking note of what this shows in terms of the spirit of this alliance,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The drills, which are expected to run up to four hours every day, may result in numerous air zones being limited to military usage at specific periods of the day, potentially disrupting aviation traffic.
While German authorities insisted on minimizing the impact of Air Defender 23 on the public, Matthias Maas, the head of the German air traffic controllers’ union GdF, cautioned that the exercises might have “massive effects on the operation of civilian aviation.”
According to German air force chief Ingo Gerhartz, the exercises were first envisioned in 2018 as part of NATO’s response to Russia’s actions in Crimea, which overwhelmingly opted to join the country in 2014 following a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Simultaneously, the general claimed that the exercises were “not targeted at anyone.”
