Today’s military ceremony at the training camp “Pepelishte” marked the beginning of the national field exercise “Flash 22”, which will be realized in the period from April 3 to 11, with activities at the army training area “Krivolak”, training camp “Pepelishte”, the barracks “Jane Sandanski” – Shtip and the barracks “Strasho Pindzur” – Petrovec.
The main goal of the exercise “Flash 22” is to assess the combat readiness of the Light Infantry Battalion (LIBn), in accordance with the Standards for Evaluation of Ground Commands and units of the NATO Joint Operations Command – CREVAL (Combat Readiness Evaluation).
At today’s opening ceremony, which was attended by the Commander of the Operations Command, Brigadier General Besnik Emini and the Commander of the First Infantry Brigade, Colonel Sashko Lafchiski, the director of the exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Zoran Sumrachki addressed the participants.
He stressed that with the successful implementation of this exercise we have the opportunity to show that we are ready to act together with our allies in accordance with the unique standards, which are needed in joint action in dealing with modern security threats.
According to the plan of activities of the exercise, tomorrow in the barracks “Jane Sandanski” in Shtip the initial activities for evaluation of the unit according to the elements of evaluation in peaceftime locations will start.
A fictitious scenario will be used for the realization of the exercise “FLASH 22”, where events and incidents will be created that will enable the unit to train and evaluate according to NATO standards, ie the Light Infantry Battalion will be able to demonstrate its combat readiness to face the complexity of the battlefield.
The evaluation will be conducted by a national evaluation team, certified by the NATO school for evaluation of the combat readiness of the ground forces, in accordance with of Alliance standards and procedures, and will assess procedures in seven different areas of competence.
Team leaders and an appropriate number of assessors are assigned to each area, depending on the scope of the evaluation. The evaluation is performed in 2 phases, at a peacetime location and in the field. At the end of the evaluation, a formal report will be signed by NATO observers and evaluation directors, after which the result will be announced to the evaluation unit.
This is the first evaluation of a larger composition in the Army after our full membership in NATO, for the success of which a great motive is the high marks we receive in recent years by NATO for successfully performing exercises on previous evaluations of the declared units, but also during participation in peacekeeping missions.
Around 1100 members of the Army of Republic of North Macedonia will participate at the exercise, as well as certain number of evaluators and NATO observers.
