Allied Command Transformation’s (ACT) Capability Engineering Division supported the Balkan regional energy security exercise ‘Energy Flame 2011’, hosted at Bulgaria’s National Military Training Centre 14-18 November.

Building on previous regional collaborative work that began in early 2009, the exercise was based on a terrorist threat to a regional gas pipeline that affects the national security of an imaginary nation in the region, triggering a United Nations Security Council Resolution.

In the scenario, the UN Security Council asks NATO to provide humanitarian, military and police support and a Balkan Multinational Brigade (BMN BDE) deploys to the region to support the request.

ACT conducted two experiments alongside Bulgaria’s national experimentation; the Comprehensive Legal Overview Virtual Information System (CLOVIS) and Strategic Communications (StratCom).

CLOVIS seeks to allow more effective management of legal information, enabling better legal advice to be prepared by the sharing of information within and between NATO Legal offices, Nations and their respective communities of interest.

StratCom is the coordinated and appropriate use of NATO communications activities and capabilities in support of Alliance policies, operations and activities to advance NATO’s aims.

Each are designed as discovery-type experiments, in which ACT seeks to introduce innovative systems, concepts, organisational structures and technologies to a setting where their use can be observed and catalogued.

For more information about ENERGY FLAME 2011 or Operational Experimentation, e-mail LTC Eddie White (US Army): eddie.white@act.nato.int.

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