Blog Posts from October, 2012
Austere Challenge 2012: Meeting and Working with our Israeli Public Affairs Counterparts
Austere Challenge 2012 (AC12) gives us an outstanding opportunity to team up with our partners from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), laying the groundwork now that will provide a foundation for working together in the future.
Public affairs representatives from the United States and the Israeli Defense Forces discuss planning details prior to a press conference October 24, 2012.
Our Combined Public Information Center team here includes EUCOM public affairs officers (PAO) and PAOs from the Joint PA Support Element from Norfolk, Va. The IDF PAOs here have been extremely welcoming and gracious hosts. Personally, I found it interesting how all but one of our Israeli PA colleagues are reservists, almost all speak excellent English (some even with no accents), and several are dual citizens, having lived in the U.S. (e.g., California, Michigan) for the first portions of their lives before moving here to become Israeli citizens.
During the first two days, we worked to learn each other's backgrounds (including civilian occupations), roles during AC12, and some best practices we can apply during the exercise to include social media engagement and PA planning. Undoubtedly, we're excited to have a productive and educational AC12 with our new friends.
Lt Col Chris Hemrick
US Air Force Reserve
EUCOM Public Affairs
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Up North
Just back from Sweden and Finland -- not NATO allies, but certainly premier partners both. I visited both in my hat as Commander of US European Command.
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EUCOMversations with Dan Regelbrugge, Defense Language Institute
The Defense Langauge Institute opened its first Europe-based language lab Oct. 4 at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany. Dan Regelbrugge joins us from the lab to talk about what the new facility offers and the dedication it took to get the center up and running.
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Brussels and the Balkans
I spent the early part of the week at the meeting of the NATO Defence Ministers at NATO Headquarters up in Brussels, about 45 minutes north of my operational command in Mons, Belgium. The second was with the NATO and additional troop contributing nations to our ongoing mission in Kosovo.
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Interagency Synchronization Forum
The EUCOM IASF was born of necessity as a response to the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008. It was organized then by the J9 to better link the geographic combatant commander with the Crisis Response Team established at the State Department.
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