About the exercises

About the exercise

"Amber Hope 2011" is the biggest multinational military exercise Lithuania has been organizing throughout its territory since 1995. The exercise will be conducted in two separate locations in Lithuania - Pabradės Training Area and Lithuania's territorial waters in the Baltic Sea on June 13-23.
"Amber Hope 2011" will be conducted on the basis of a fictitious peace support operation (as a type of crisis response operation) scenario tailored to meet the exercise training objectives. The exercise scenario was developed with regard to the most recent challenges and experience that Lithuanian and partner nations' soldiers have gained in multinational operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.
Last exercise "Amber Hope" was conducted in 2007 in Klaipėda. Around 1700 soldiers and civilian personnel from Lithuania and 11 foreign countries took part in this exercise. "Amber Hope" is coming back to Lithuania after a pause of 4 year - it is great news!

The aim of the exercise

The aim of "Amber Hope 2011" is to improve interoperability among military units of NATO and Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries in conducting NATO-led crisis response operations. Such operations are political, military and civilian actions which are aimed at solving conflicts, controlling or preventing crises, or seeking humanitarian aims of the Alliance. The greatest attention is paid to employment of different equipment and technical facilities, and different structures of divisions and procedures, as well as to evaluation and improvement of Host Nation Support (HNS) procedures.

Tasks of the exercise

Improvement of interoperability interaction; understanding the principles of crisis response operations and HNS procedures.
Training redeployment of troops' to operation area, preparation for crisis response operations and for participation in multinational operations.
Encouraging cooperation, trust and interaction between units and personnel of NATO countries.

Participants

Almost 2200 military service members and civilians from nine NATO and NATO partner countries - Canada, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, USA and Lithuania - will take part in the exercise.
Nearly 500 soldiers from foreign countries are expected to join „Amber Hope 2011" with their own equipment and materiel. These troops will form 2 multinational battalions during the exercise. One of them will be led by a Lithuanian officer while another - by Finnish.
The event is exceptional because all the branches of Lithuanian Armed Forces - Land Force, Air Force, Navy and Special Operation Forces - take part in it.