Nato began its largest ever air force deployment exercise in Europe on Monday, in a display of unity toward partners and potential threats such as Russia. The German-led \u201cAir Defender 23\u201d will include some 250 military aircraft from 25 Nato and partner countries including Japan and Sweden, which is bidding to join the alliance. It will run until June 23. Up to 10,000 service members are to participate in the drills intended to boost interoperability and preparedness to protect against drones and cruise missiles in the case of an attack within Nato territory. \u201cThe significant message we\u2019re sending is that we can defend ourselves,\u201d Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz of the German Luftwaffe told public television. \u201cAir Defender\u201d was conceived in 2018 in part as a response to the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine four years before, though Gerhartz insisted it was \u201cnot targeted at anyone\u201d. He said the exercise would not \u201csend any flights, for example, in the direction of Kaliningrad,\u201d the Russian enclave bordering alliance member states Poland and Lithuania. \u201cWe are a defensive alliance and that is how this exercise is planned,\u201d he said. The first flights began in the late morning at the Wunstorf, Jagel and Lechfeld air bases, a Luftwaffe spokesman confirmed. Hundreds of demonstrators had gathered at Wunstorf in northern Germany on Saturday against the drills, under the banner \u201cPractice peace \u2014 not war\u201d. Protesters called for a \u201cdiplomatic solution\u201d to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and an immediate ceasefire. US Ambassador to Germany Amy Gutmann said the exercise would show \u201cbeyond a shadow of a doubt the agility and the swiftness of our allied force\u201d and was intended to send a message to countries including Russia. \u201cI would be pretty surprised if any world leader was not taking note of what this shows in terms of the spirit of this alliance, which means the strength of this alliance, and that includes Mr Putin,\u201d she told reporters, referring to the Russian president. \u201cBy synchronising together, we multiply our force.\u201d Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine has galvanised the Western military alliance set up almost 75 years ago to face off against the Soviet Union. Finland and Sweden, which long kept an official veneer of neutrality to avoid conflict with Moscow, both sought membership in Nato after Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion. Under Nato\u2019s Article Five, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. The exercise includes operational and tactical-level training, primarily in Germany, but also in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, with a total of around 2,000 flights. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit pilots based at the Jagel airfield in northern Germany on Friday. General Michael Loh, director of the US Air National Guard, said Nato\u2019s duties were at an \u201cinflection point\u201d. \u201cA great deal has changed on the strategic landscape throughout the world, especially here in Europe,\u201d he said. The exercise will focus on \u201csupplementing the permanent United States presence in Europe\u201d as well as providing training \u201con a larger scale than what was usually accomplished on the continent\u201d, Loh added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nato began its largest ever air force deployment exercise in Europe on Monday, in a display of unity toward partners and potential threats such as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7519,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}