Air Defender 2023 - NATO's Largest Air Exercise

With the current conflict in Ukraine taking place largely because Russia felt obligated to protect its flanks against NATO's unceasing expansionism, an event that will take place in Germany in June 2023 should draw some attention from the Kremlin.

  

Air Defender 23 will take place between June 12th and 23rd, 2023 in European airspace under the command of the German Air Force:

This event will be the largest deployment exercise of air forces in NATO's history and will consist of up to 10,000 exercise participants from 24 nations utilizing 220 aircraft of 23 different types.  One hundred of these aircraft will be supplied from the inventory of the United States National Guard from 35 states in the U.S.  

  

The following nations are participating:

 

Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

 

Interestingly, Sweden is not a member of NATO and Finland's membership was just approved in April 2023.

 

The exercises will be held at the following locations with the airfields Schleswig/Hohn, Wunstorf and Lechfield in Germany:

 

1.) Jagel/Hohn in Schleswig-Holstein

    

2.) Laage in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

    

3.) Wunstorf in Lower Saxony

    

4.) Lechfeld in Bavaria

    

5.) Spangdahlem in Rhineland-Palatinate

    

6.) Volkel in the Netherlands

    

7.) Čáslav in the Czech Republic 

  

The main aim of Air Defender is for Germany to exercise its role as a "strategic collective defence hub" within Europe.  It will help the militaries of NATO member states improve interoperability between their assets, test their command-and-control structures and test their intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance and cyber capabilities.  Germany's Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) has also stated that the exercise will be modelled after an Article 5 Assistance scenario, one of the principles of NATO's existence as shown here:

 

Aircraft in the exercise will include the following:

 

1.) Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth multirole fighter

 

2.) Fairchild A-10 twin-0engine ground combat aircraft

 

3.) General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter

 

4.) McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighter

 

5.) Boeing F/A-18C/D Hornet fighter

 

6.) General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and attack drone

 

7.) Lockheed Marting C-130KJ Hercules military transport

 

8.) Airbus C295M military transport

 

9.) Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelling tanker and cargo/troop transporter

 

10.) Dassault DA20 Falcon airborne electronic warfare capable

 

11.) Saab JAS 39 Gripen C/C combat aircraft

 

12.) Kawasaki C-2 cargo/troop transporter

 

13.) Alenia C-27J multipurpose transport aircraft

 

14.) Boeing KC-46 aerial refuelling tanker and cargo/troop transporter

  

Just in case you were curious, the Air Defender 23 exercise has not gone unnoticed by the Russians as shown here:

 

 

But, I'm certain that the Kremlin will not feel one bit threatened by the fact that NATO is planning is largest ever deployment of its air forces in its history.  I'm sure that it's just a coincidence.