From April 8 to 23, the FEDERATED CLOUD 2021 exercise took place. It was a communications exercise and its general purpose was to verify the interoperability of command and control systems according to the concept of the so-called Federated Mission Networking (FMN), which is based on experience from NATO's ending operations in Afghanistan.

A unified approach and compatibility of resources in this area is a key requirement for the effective deployment of multinational forces. The Army organizes these exercises to verify the functionality and security of the systems in use. This year the exercise is also an important step within the introduction of brand new command and communication variants of the Pandur II CZ armored vehicles.

Picture: The new command-staff and communication Pandur armored vehicles are just one step from their full implementation in the 4th Brigade | Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic

The ongoing exercise serves the Army to perform a comprehensive configuration of new wheeled armored command and staff vehicles (KOVVŠ) and wheeled armored communication vehicles (KOVS).

The last pieces of these vehicles were delivered to the Army in December last year under a contract between the Ministry of Defense and the Kopřivnice-based Tatra Defense Vehicle company from the Czechoslovak Group. There are a total of twenty Pandurs in these unique arrangements, of which six are KOVVŠ, including six field command posts, and fourteen are KOVS. They are designed primarily for the 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade and will be used by both the brigade headquarters and the headquarters of individual mechanized battalions, where they will replace the outdated equipment. In the maneuver staff and communication Pandurs will easily in all circumstances keep up with combat and other variants. In addition to advanced equipment and advanced systems for effective command, control and communication, they will provide their crews with adequate ballistic protection.

In addition to the 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, the units which took part in the Federated Cloud 2021 exercise were the 7th Mechanized Brigade, 13th Artillery Regiment, 14th Logistics Support Regiment, 53rd Regiment of Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare, 31st Regiment of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Protection, 25th Air Defence Missile Regiment, 22nd Helicopter Base, Special Forces and Operations Command, with a total strength of four hundred soldiers with 81 pieces of ground equipment.

The Army of the Czech Republic joined the concept of Federated Mission Networking, which was created on the basis of the so-called Afghan Mission Networking from 2010, in 2016. Since 2017, readiness according to this concept has been one of the conditions for enlisting troops for the NATO Response Force (NRF), Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) and within the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP). The first exercise was the Czech Steadfast Cobalt 2018, followed by Federated Cloud 2019 and Federated Cloud 2020. The exercise took place at the Bečva training ground near Lipník nad Bečvou.