CAOC Finderup 1993 - 2013 - FlyvevÃ¥bnets Historiske Samling

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hosted many Danish Airexercises as well assupporting Danish andGerman Naval exercises,no matter whether theywere driven by national orNATO exerciserequirements.WhenCOMAIRBALTAP and theDanish AP unit (SectorOperations CenterVedbæk) weretransformed into Interim (I)CAOC 1 (out of 10) under command andcontrol of COMAIRCENT (Ramstein) in 1993the Peace-time Establishment manning was66 airmen. The Air Policing Area covered all ofthe Danish Flight Information Region (FIR)with an exception in the Baltic Sea, where anextension east of Bornholm catered for anearly intercept of any threats from the east.Again during this period the CAOC servedmany Danish as well as NATO interests. Mostlikely the CAOC had one of its more quietmoments, since the threat from WAPA hadvanished and the Russian Air Force wastransformed to maintain its air activities in anormal pattern due to the economic crisis inRussia. Besides the continuous Air Policing,the focus was therefore on supporting NATOand national training requirements, whichamong others included numerous NATO Airmeets and daily tasking of all Danish taskedmissions. During this period (I)CAOC 1 alsotried to extend the support to TACDEN anditself by implementing an ATO encompassingthe full tasking of all Danish training andtasked missions. The purpose was clear, tokeep up proficiency in CAOC primary output -ATO production. However, the offer to theDanish Air bases and TACDEN was not fullysupported, and the Danish daily ATO projectwas put aside.It was a huge success, when (I)CAOC 1survived the NATO transformation in 2002 andbecame CAOC 1 out of 4 remaining CAOCs.Consequently CAOC 1 was allocated a newextended Air Police Area (APA1) coveringDenmark, Norway, UK and Iceland. However,the transformation process dragged out formany years and it was not until March 2008that CAOC 1 initially took over CAOC 3 AOR(Norway) and later the same year thatTransfer of Authority (TOA) of the UK area(CAOC 9) was completed. The new PeaceTime Establishment for CAOC 1 was 125airmen and women, and it was clearly one of22
the best times in CAOCF existence, withnumerous new personnel coming into theCAOC. The new APA gave CAOC 1 a wholenew challenge, which required extensive leadintraining primarily for A3 with regards to dailyAP. But the Command Group was alsochallenged with new dialogues with UK andNorwegian National Headquarters on theircaveats for employment of QRA andcommand relationships on their CRCs andradars. The result of these dialogues wasrecorded in local Letters of Agreements (LOA),which became an essential tool for executingour daily AP functions. In general, theamalgamation went on very smoothly, thanksto the presence of very competent personnelfrom the nations, who were dedicated to serveboth national as well as NATO interests.With the amalgamation, the daily AP wentthrough a revival process. Denmark had formany years announced that the threat fromthe East was no longer a priority. However,Norway, with its border right next to Russia,gave the increasing Russian air activity ahigher priority, and insisted on a consistentand very firm execution of the daily AP tasks.This concern and national interest was ofcourse backed up with very detailedintelligence support from Norwegianresources. Thereby our daily AP becameintelligence driven, which clearly spurred themorale and ethos of operations. Another verypositive task that followed the amalgamationwith CAOC3 was the adoption of the processof conducting a daily ATO on AP. Even thoughit was not a big ATO, it followed the principlesof planning an ATO and became well acceptedas an excellent training tool for A5 to maintainproficiency and for the Command Group to beinvolved in the AP by attending a daily ATOrelease brief, which included an intelligenceestimate for the APA.In parallel to these improvements on thedaily AP against non-NATO aircraft enteringour APA, the threat from possible renegadeaircraft became a growing concern, which inreality superseded the traditional threat fromthe East. Reaction time was of the essence,and therefore the processes of handlingrenegade aircraft became a frequent trainingpattern; such scenarios became a permanentpart of all major exercises. In reality, the finalhandling of threats from renegade aircraft wasa national responsibility. The CAOC’s maintask was to handle the initial part of such ascenario in the best possible manner by eitherhaving our QRA on highest possible alert or ifthe situation dictated so, airborne on coursetowards the possible renegade aircraft andfrom there to be prepared to facilitate aseamless TOA of NATO QRA to NationalAuthorities. Any civilian aircraft having loss ofcommunications automatically raisedsuspicion on the possibility of having arenegade situation in progress. SinceCOMLOSS was a common event, alertnesswas always high on the OPS floor. Luckilyenough, we have not yet experienced anygenuine renegade situations in APA1.The NATO Command Structure with 4CAOCs, initially under COMAIRCENT andlater Air Component (AC) Ramstein, gave birth23
Page 1 and 2: CAOC Finderup1993 - 20131
Page 3: TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction 2Cres
Page 6 and 7: BALTAPWhen NATO was formed in 1949,
Page 8 and 9: Bunker 7After almost eight years of
Page 10 and 11: NATO Air OperationsAn Integrated NA
Page 12 and 13: Operation Allied Force and Kosovo F
Page 14 and 15: The International Security Assistan
Page 16 and 17: of CAOCs was reduced to two, plus o
Page 18: The ThreatIn the period that air op
Page 21: of its former strength, and the cur
Page 25 and 26: further led to adopting similar tra
Page 27 and 28: CAOC Finderup ExercisesAs soon as t
Page 29 and 30: ecognised that NATO lacked signific
Page 31 and 32: town. When the time came for the oc
Page 33 and 34: To make a better understanding of t
Page 35 and 36: COMMANDERS ICAOC Finderupand CAOC F
Page 41: 41Back to Tables of Contents

CAOC Finderup 1993 - 2013 - FlyvevÃ¥bnets Historiske Samling

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