23 March (BNS)

The Baltic air policing training of NATO that ended on Wednesday demonstrated the allies' ability to guard Baltic skies, a NATO general said. In addition to NATO air assets, fighters of Sweden, a member of the Partnership for Peace program, also took part in the eighth Baltic Region Training Event (BRTE), the General Staff of the Estonian Defence Forces said.

"The recently ended exercise is an important step towards expanding the co-operation between the air forces of the Baltic states and our partner country Sweden," said Lt. Gen Friedrich Ploeger, deputy commander of NATO's Allied Air Command Ramstein. "The training demonstrated our ability to defend the Baltic airspace, deepened the Baltic states' connection with NATO's integrated air defence system, and underlined NATO's commitment to collective defence and security."

During the two-day exercise the participating units practiced detecting an unidentified aircraft and escorting it from a sovereign nation's air space into NATO airspace, handover procedures, and co-ordination among flight control centres.

Participants included German F-4 Phantom fighters, Swedish JAS-39 Gripen, a Polish transport plane C-295, and a Lithuanian transport plane C-27 Spartan.

"The aim of the training was to practice co-operation between different units," chief of the Estonian Air Force Brig. Gen. Valeri Saar said. "Estonia is a member of NATO and its integrated air defence system. All procedures have to be the same from Estonia to Portugal."

An important aspect of the training was that various situations could be played through in reality by real people and in real time, he said.