Viking, hosted by Sweden, a NATO Partner, is one of the world’s largest international staff exercises, jointly planned and carried out by staff from the United Nations, European Union, civilian authorities, police, military and representatives from humanitarian organizations.
The aim of Viking 18 is to train and educate participants, civilian, military and police, to meet the challenges of current and future multinational crisis response and peace operation. The exercise has been arranged regularly every few years since 1999.
The next Viking exercise will take place 16 to 26 April 2018. Last time it was conducted in 2014 it gathered some 2,500 participants from around 50 countries, and participation is expected to be as high this time. There will be four sites to practice in Sweden. Brazil, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland and Serbia also take part in the training and host one site each.
Many different actors are active in international crisis management and peace and crisis management operations. Intergovernmental organizations usually deploy field staff. Civil society organizations and humanitarian organizations second staff, as well as the Armed Forces and the Police. Viking provides an opportunity to familiarize with the complex and risky work before undertaking it.
NATO Allied Command Transformation Experimenting in Exercises. The mission of Experimenting in Exercises is to plan, design, conduct, analyse, and report on experiments within exercises while avoiding any detriment to the training and certification objectives of the exercising commanders and their forces. Click here for fact sheet.
Protection of Civilians / Viking 18 Experiment Description. A limited objective discovery experiment with the intent to initiate and observe the dialogue between NATO, United Nations, and European Union representatives about Protection of Civilians issues. Click here for fact sheet.
Projecting Stability / Viking 18 Experiment Description. A limited objective discovery experiment exploring how exercises can support the Projecting Stability approach. Click here for fact sheet.
Stability Policing / Viking 18 Experiment Description. A Discovery Limited Objective Experiment that will assess the validity of the Command and Control and Coordination with External Actors aspects of the Stability Policing Concept. Click here for fact sheet.
Federated Mission Network – Civil Military . Viking 18 Experiment Description. Assessment of proposed Federated Mission Network - Civil Military tactics, techniques and procedures to support and improve Civilian-Military information sharing in a Peacekeeping and Stability Operations environment. Click here for fact sheet.
Read more on Viking 18 here.
Visit the Swedish Armed Forces Viking 18 website here.
Visit Folke Bernadotte Academy – Swedish agency for peace, security and development website here.