BALTIMORE - A recent multi-national exercise pairing the Baltic states with NATO forces joined the Maryland National Guard with its partner nation Estonia in regional interoperability and command and control training.
Saber Strike is a long-standing, multilateral, multifaceted, U.S. Army Europe-led security cooperation exercise primarily focused on the three Baltic States. The exercise spans multiple locations in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and involves approximately 2,000 personnel from 14 countries.
Maryland's role in the exercise was to provide A-10C Thunderbolt II jets to conduct close air support for multi-national ground forces.
"Saber Strike gives our nations the opportunity to work together in a peaceful training environment to increase our cooperative skills and make our forces efficient and effective," said Maj. Gen. James A. Adkins, adjutant general of Maryland.
Adkins, who was Maryland's first project officer in Estonia in 1993, also attended a ceremony in Tallinn commemorating the 20th anniversary of Maryland's state partnership with Estonia. The state partnership program furthers civil and military cooperation to promote peace, stability, prosperity and democratic principles.
"Over the past 20 years, we have achieved great success through our partnerships while supporting U.S. foreign policy objectives," said Adkins. "As we look forward to the future, the SPP remains a cost-effective engagement program that produces results beneficial to the United States and our partners."
Over the past two decades, the SPP has expanded its mission to now include not just training, but also real-world missions.
Two Estonian helicopter pilots, Capt. Rene Kallis and Capt. Martin Noorsalu, are serving with the Maryland National Guard on a three-year tour. They recently returned from Afghanistan with the Maryland Army National Guard's C Company, 1st Battalion, 169th Air Ambulance Company where they flew medical evacuation missions alongside Maryland pilots.
The Maryland National Guard established its state partnership with Estonia in 1993 to assist with the Baltic state's transition to independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2003, the Maryland National Guard began another partnership, this time with Bosnia and Herzegovina, to help stabilize that country following the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ethnic conflict that followed.
Twenty-six military policemen from the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina deployed last fall to Afghanistan with the Maryland National Guard's 115th Military Police Battalion to support the International Security Assistance Force. These soldiers are fully integrated into the unit and conduct operations with Maryland Guard members.
"The partnership between Maryland and Bosnia and Herzegovina is a classic example of how it works," said Gen. Frank J. Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau. "We took a country out of war, and we worked together as they went from a consumer of security to a producer of security."
Nationwide, the State Partnership Program involves 65 different partner counties and nearly every state and territory in the nation covering Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Although many of the partner nations have deployed together, in 2012, Maryland's became the first program ever to have supported two co-deployments with two different partner nations at the same time.