“NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019” was officially opened at the Georgian Ministry of Defence "Army Hall" in Tbilisi.

First Deputy Defense Minister Lela Chikovani and Brigadier General Ladislav Jung, the JFTC Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff, opened the exercise.

“NATO-Georgia Exercise 2019” will take place at the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center, Krtsanisi National Training Centre on March 18 -29. 343 military and civilian personnel from 24 Allied Member States and partner countries will participate in the exercise.

It is the second NATO-Georgia joint multinational brigade-level, Computer Assisted, Command Post exercise, where for the first time the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center acts as the Officer Directing Exercise and the Georgian General Staff has Officer Conducting the Exercise status.

The exercise is further developing the interoperability of Georgian, Allied and Partner Forces, as well as Georgian command and control capabilities. It is also testing the ability to adopt a comprehensive approach to a non-article 5 crisis response, involving civil-military cooperation with international organizations and non-governmental organizations.

This is the second NATO-Georgia exercise to take place under the SNGP framework - a series of 15 defence capacity building measures agreed between Georgia and NATO at the Wales summit in 2014. The first NATO-Georgia exercise was conducted in 2016 involving NATO Allied and Partner Nations.

The brigade-level exercise is scheduled by NATO Allied Command Transformation, conducted by the Georgian General Staff with the mentoring of NATO Land Command, and directed by the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center mentored by NATO Joint Force Training Centre.

Humanitarian bodies like the inter-governmental organizations International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO, observer) will also be present during the exercise providing direct feedback and mentorship to exercise participants.