An air deployment exercise billed as the biggest in NATO\u2019s history and hosted by Germany got underway on Monday. According to international media reports, the Air Defender 2023 exercise that is set to run through June 23 was long-planned but serves to showcase the alliance\u2019s capabilities amid high tensions with Russia. The first planes took off on Monday morning from airfields in northern Germany. Some 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations will respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member. The United States alone is sending 2,000 U.S. Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft. \u201cThe exercise is a signal \u2014 a signal above all to us, a signal to us, the NATO countries, but also to our population that we are in a position to react very quickly … that we would be able to defend the alliance in case of attack,\u201d German air force chief Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz told newsmen. Gerhartz said he proposed the exercise in 2018, reasoning that Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea underlined the need to be able to defend NATO. \u201cI hope that there we will be no cancellations; there may be delays in the order of minutes here and there,\u201d he said, insisting that a study cited by the air traffic controllers\u2019 union assumes a worst-case scenario in bad weather in which the military wouldn\u2019t fly anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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