Rapid reaction operations enable civil and military forces to respond quickly and jointly to a variety of threats, crises and conflicts across the globe. Rendering multinational, interagency missions more effective requires significant adjustments to force structure and utilization. New collaborative operating concepts are also needed. Substantial transformation efforts geared at optimizing resources and response capabilities in order to accomplish such missions are now being undertaken. This requires uncompromising, steadfast cooperation between national, regional and international military forces, security agencies, government and civil organisations, humanitarian and multi-lateral agencies from across the globe. This forum will focus on the importance of joint, multi-national and interagency, efforts in combating threats, as well as the challenges of cooperation in inter-agency operations - from strategic to tactical levels. Experts from across the globe, from military, civil-policing organizations, academia and industry, come together in Brussels to offer you valuable insights on the policies, standards, operations and equipment required for successful joint rapid reaction manoeuvres.

DISCUSSION TOPICS INCLUDE
- Accelerating rapid reaction deployment in a joint environment
- Improving multinational co-operability
- Achieving improved situational awareness
- Enhancing multi-national strategic lift capabilities
- Developing capabilities to rapidly react during stabilization and reconstruction missions
- Joint international security and peacekeeping efforts
- Lessons learned: peacekeeping mission: Bosnia / Afghanistan
- Joint civil-military exercise
- Additional discussion topics and relevant interactive workshops will complete the
programme

FORUM BENEFITS
- Assessing capabilities of and requirements from military, civil and crisis management organizations in rapid response operations
- Identifying innovative technologies and techniques geared at enhancing force
multinational and inter-agency force response and protection
- Gaining insight in preparing joint teams for critical incident response and crisis
management
- Examining the challenges for Command & Control in multi-agency response efforts
- Understanding the difficulties of interoperability between military and civil actions
throughout joint missions
FEATURED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Lieutenant General Randhir Kumar Mehta - Military Advisor United Nations Peacekeeping Department.
Major General Gian Marco Chiarini - (Italian Army) Commander, EUFOR
Colonel Ralph Thiele - Commander, Bundeswehr Centre for Transformation, German Armed Forces (invited)
Colonel Wouter Sleurink - Leader, Allied Command Transformation's Expeditionary Operations Integrated Capability Team, NATO
Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley - City of London Police, Former Senior Police Advisor – Iraq
Günter Bretschneider - Head of Section, NATO Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Center EADRCC
Declan Greenway - Senior Security Coordinator, Organization for Security and Coordination in Europe (OSCE)
Captain (N) Gunnar Borch - Royal Norwegian Navy, Director, Sealift Co-ordination Center, The Netherlands
James H. Bergeron - Political Advisor, Naval Striking and Support Forces, NATO
Commander (Ret) Stephen Benson - Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Lena Larsson - Training & Project Leader, Folke Bernadotte Academy, Sweden
Colonel Bert Kuijpers - Chief CIMIC Branch, Kabul (October 2006) Director of the Civil-Military Cooperation Centre Former chief CIMIC Branch, Allied Rapid Reaction Corps
Colonel Gintautas Zenkevicius - Lithuanian Armed Forces
Simon Peter Brooks - International Committee of the Red Cross, Delegate responsible for relations with the Armed Forces of Western Europe
CHAIRED BY: Dr. Andrew Dorman - Senior Lecturer (Defence Studies)—Kings College London, Senior Research Fellow—Centre for Defence Studies, Deputy Editor-World Defence Systems