From 12th to 16th November, at the Training area (TA) “Pepelishte” a national workshop for the preparation of the plan for the exercise “Decisive strike” was held. The exercise will take place next year in June.
The personnel who were part of the exercise planning team took actively participated at the workshop. The following units took part at the workshop: Command of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) and the first subordinate units from the 1st Mechanized Infantry Brigade (1st MIB), the Brigade for Logistics Support (BRLS), Airborne Brigade (AB), Signals Battalion (SB) and Special Operations Regiment (SOR).
At the beginning of the workshop the team was informed about the work obligations and the expectations for fulfilling goals. The introductory briefing was presented by the Director of the “Decisive strike” exercise, Lieutenant Colonel Igor Manasovski. He stressed that the planning process of this largest international exercise in the Republic of Macedonia so far, as part of the southern campaign of EUCOM exercises called exercises in the Black Sea and the Balkan region (in the BSandBR) will have a lot of challenges which need to be overcome by professionalism and dedication of each member of the team. At the same time, the preparation of the units participating in the exercise will be the biggest challenge for the realization of this activity. He defined the obligations and responsibilities in order to direct the staff towards fulfilling the assigned tasks.
On November 16th, the workshop was closed with the preparation of the initial version of the exercise plan. Basically, this workshop is a solid preparation for the continuation of the planning process for the exercise in the period from the 10th to the 14th of December 2018, when the Main Planning Conference in TA Pepelishte will take place, on which besides the representatives of the Army of the Republic of Macedonia representatives of the Armed Forces of the United States, Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Lithuania will take part.
