ULSNES / ISAF VI TRAINING: This week 400 people have prepared at Ulsnes for a training period the next four days. “This is the final exercise for the 6th ISAF headquarters,” said Major General James Short. Of the 400 participating at the training facilities at Ulsnes 165 will be part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF VI) headquarters. Nearly 40% of them are augmentees from different areas, and have not been working together earlier.

“They are a new team, who got to learn to work with each other,” told Major General James Short, Exercise Director for the training. “We are here to deliver training opportunities, making the training audience succeed reaching their goals and objectives.”

When not running exercises, the Major General is Chief of Staff at the Joint Warfare Centre, which is a Nato training centre for the operational level. The centre has not reached full operability, but is already providing Nato training.

“So far they seem to be quite happy to be here,” could a smiling Short tell us. “The feedback we are receiving tells us that both the training and the facilities are good. The overall judgment will be given later, but so far so good,” a happy General said.

Experts from every field of knowledge have arrived the old naval base for the training of the ISAF VI headquarters. More than 20 Subject Matter Experts are preparing the headquarters for Afghanistan, by teaching them about culture, society, religion and the political situation in the country. There is also a so-called “white cell”, where specialists play the roles of civilian leaders and organizations to make the training as realistic as possible.

Tomorrow, the 400 personnel at Ulsnes are going into the Mission Rehearsal Training period, which is a 4-day computer-aided exercise. During this period of time the training audience will be challenged to respond to different situations, or so-called vignettes. The main purpose of this period is for the training audience to learn to cooperate and communicate, or as the Exercise Director concluded: “The main objective for us is to build, educate and train the team.”