11th/04/2006

NAWAS 2006 Exercise: The DGA assessment

The NAWAS exercise, which is a ground to air firing campaign conducted by the French Army, has taken place between February 28 th and March 10th at the Landes site (in France) of the Launching Missiles Test Center (CELM) of the DGA. This operational training is done every year and allows the anti-air firing brigade to test, in as close as possible to actual battlefield conditions, all components from threat identification, chain of command, transmissions, troop deployment and up to the destruction of a simulated air target deployed and controled by CELM. This exercise mobilized around 850 military personnel.

The assessment of the NAWAS 2006 exercise can be summarised along the following 4 points:

  a very strong implication of the anti-aircraft means such as: anti-aircraft artillery, medium, short and very short range ground-to-air missiles and short range air-to-air missiles. It is some 70 Mistral, Hawk and Roland missiles that have been fired,

  a multi-weapons aspect with the participation of combat helicopters (RHC) from the air-mobility brigade (BAM)

  a multi-services aspect with the participation of the command air information and communication monitoring systems (CASSIC) unit,

  an inter-allied aspect with the participation of a ground-to-air artillery Belgian regiment (RASA).

The CELM, which during this exercise NAWAS 2006 has launched its 10 000e missile at the Landes site, is the only center in France able to perform missile flying tests under safety conditions in vast areas for people and equipment whilst ensuring trajectory calculation and observation of the flying targets.

Francois COTE
Head of DGA/CELM