Being a partner means actively planning and training forces to support NATO or U.N. missions. To meet those requirements, partnership units must tackle training that challenges their troops to improve their defense strategies and to meet NATO standards. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John White, who welcomed the foreign troops last week, emphasized the need to build on the success of last year's exercise, Cooperative Nugget, at Fort Polk, La. White compared the exercises to Olympic pole vaulting. That is what we're doing here at Cooperative Osprey. We are making these exercises more sophisticated and more challenging than those that preceded it.
Teamwork is crucial in partnership exercises.
If NATO is to conduct multinational missions, all elements must all play by the same rules. Platoons use common communications equipment and are familiar with each other's weapons and tactics. Unlike its Fort Polk forerunner, which was purely land- based, Cooperative Osprey provided partnership platoons a different training outlook. N.C. They secured an urban village from insurgents, performed search and rescue operations and monitored convoys and checkpoints. To prepare for the challenge, the six training companies spent the first week rotating through six scenarios based on the final mission.