A live, three-day joint NATO-Russia counter-terrorism exercise “Vigilant Skies 2013”, to test the NATO-Russia Council’s Cooperative Airspace Initiative (CAI) Information Exchange System (IES), has been successfully completed on Thursday 26 September 2013. The exercise took place over the three CAI geographical areas of operational interest, Bodø – Murmansk, Warsaw – Kaliningrad and Ankara – Rostov-on-Don.

42 Solutions at the heart of the exercise

The EUROCONTROL product CIMACT is the air-traffic control tool used by the nations on the NATO side. The CIMACT is maintained by 42 Solutions and as such, 42 Solutions was a big contributor to the overall success of the exercise. With colleagues present at the Warsaw and Ankara locations, we were at the heart of the exercise and ready to mitigate any possible problems that could occur or answer any question from the audience and even the operators.

Great success

At the NATO-Russia Ministers’ meeting on 23 October 2013, the NATO Secretary General declared that “The exercise was a great success. We now have a proven joint capacity to respond to the hijacking of civilian aircraft and we have showed how effective the NATO-Russia Council is in this field.”

Offical NATO-Russia Council website on Vigilant Skies 2013