BRATISLAVA, September 19, (WEBNOVINY) — In the near future, Defense Minister Lubomir Galko plans opening the issue of financing of the Lest military training area. “We need to distribute it among several departments in order to provide the capacities we lack,” said Galko. He underlined that the facility is also used by foreign partners who evaluate it as excellent. The minister watched a demonstration of Black Bear 2011 NATO Multinational Military Police Battalion exercise which takes place for the first time in Slovakia. The battalion consists of Slovak, Czech, Croatian and Polish military police units.
According to Minister Galko, Slovak military police are hundred-percent trained and neither their training nor language capabilities are worse than those of their colleagues. He believes that the battalion will get a certificate of readiness for deployment within multinational crisis management missions next year. Yet, according to Galko this exercise has shown that military police of other countries is better equipped. “Let’s use two devices from the Czech Republic as an example. The protection and monitoring system which is able of identifying a perpetrator in an area of tens of square kilometers. And a mobile X-ray device which can fully substitute a classical airport scanner,” said Galko. He emphasized that there are professionals in the Slovak military police; however, they need to have technologies comparable to their foreign colleagues.
The Black Bear 2011 exercise started on September 12 and will end this Tuesday, September 20. Four-hundred participants were training and coordinating the capabilities of a multinational battalion. Police officers from four countries trained evacuating an elementary school, neutralizing terrorists, an intervention of special units against protesters intending to attack refugees on a train as well as response after a suicide attack.
SITA