Major air defence drill in Germany

A ‘Eurofighter’ takes off from the Schleswig-Jagel Air Base. Pic/AP

An air deployment exercise billed as the biggest in NATO's history and hosted by Germany got underway on Monday. The Air Defender 2023 exercise that is set to run through June 23 was long-planned but serves to showcase the alliance's capabilities amid high tensions with Russia.

The first planes took off on Monday morning from airfields in northern Germany. Some 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations will respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member. The US alone is sending 2,000 US Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft.

"The exercise is a signal - a signal above all to us, a signal to us, the NATO countries, but also to our population that we are in a position to react very quickly... that we would be able to defend the alliance in case of attack," German air force chief Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz told ZDF television. Gerhartz said he proposed the exercise in 2018, reasoning that Russia's annexation of Crimea underlined the need to be able to defend NATO.

250
No of aircraft that will take part in exercise