As a show of force amid tensions with Russia, NATO has begun the largest air exercise in its history.
In response to a mock attack on an alliance member, more than 250 aircraft and 10,000 personnel from 25 nations will be sent, with the US sending 2,000 members of the Air National Guard and around 100 jets alone.
On Monday morning, the first aircraft took off from airfields in northern Germany.
The Air Defender 23 drill is expected to run until June 23, but planning began in 2018.
‘The exercise is a signal – a signal above all 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 air exercise five years ago, reasoning that Russia’s annexation of Crimea underlined the need to be able to defend Nato.
But it was the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that pushed the alliance to get ready for the possibility of an attack on its territory.
Sweden, which is hoping to become member, and Japan are also participating in the exercise.
There have already been warnings it could disrupt flights in some parts of Europe.
Matthias Maas, the head of a German air traffic controllers’ union, GdF, said that it ‘will of course have massive effects on the operation of civilian aviation’.
But Gerhartz disputed that, arguing that Germany’s air traffic control authority has worked with the air force to keep disruption ‘as small as possible’.
He noted that the exercise is limited to three areas which will not all be used at the same time, and that it will be over before school vacations start in any German state.
‘I hope that there we will be no cancellations; there may be delays in the order of minutes here and there,’ he said, insisting that the study cited by the air traffic controllers’ union assumes a worst-case scenario in bad weather in which the military would not fly anyway.