US Joint Staff led Bold Quest 19 is currently ongoing in Finland.
Main participants: USA, Finland, France, Germany. Other participants: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Mostly C2 interconnectivity tests. A 5 million dollar fibre network (35km) was built by Finns for this series of tests. It will remain largely in use after the event.
Few Rafales, USAF tankers, Finnish Hornet will drop a JDAM, JTAC stuff... 1500 foreign participants.
Finland will host in spring 2019 a two-month-long international military exercise on information and guidance technologies, local media reported on Tuesday.
Sami Nurmi, chief spokesman for the defense forces told a Finnish language newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday that the "Bold Quest" exercise will be unusually expensive in Finnish conditions.
Nurmi elaborated that the maneuver will require over two million euros worth investments that will then remain at the disposal of Finland, for use by the Finnish military after the exercise. The cost of Bold Quest will take 40 percent of the budget for participation in international exercises in 2019.
"Bold Quest" will be hardly visible to the public as its 2,000 participants "will sit in underground facilities". "This will be a unique and very technically oriented maneuver", he said.
Even though hosted by Finland, the exercise will be led by the United States. "This is only the third time Bold Quest will be arranged outside the U.S.", Nurmi said. The exercise in Finland will gather military from 19 countries, and 700 servicepersons will be from Finland.
http://www.dailyfinland.fi/national/769 ... er-in-2019Here's what it includes, from a former Bold Quest (17.2) report:
From its Combat Identification origins, Bold Quest has expanded to include capability development in other mission areas associated with fires interoperability:
Friendly Force Tracking
Coalition Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Shared Situational Awareness
Digitally Aided Close Air Support
Cyber (Effects, Tactical Level and Network Defense)
Other trends in the evolution of the Bold Quest series include: increasing leadership roles and responsibilities of partners; integrating interoperability objectives and unit training opportunities; strengthening ties with U.S.-based hosting installations and aligning with major exercises in the U.S. and overseas.
https://www.jcs.mil/Media/News/News-Dis ... ith-16-pa/