In the End of October 2010 the EU-BattleGroup was training in the Nederland / Belgium . In the next year the troops of Nederland , Germany , Finnland, Austria and Lithuan are the Contingent of EU-BattleGroup 2011.
So a lot of Pictures to the Exercises :

The Austria Army with their Pandur II ( Infantry Component )



The Nederland Army ( Landmacht ).....Infantry and Air Mobile Contingent









Nederland light Vehicle with heavy Maschine Gun



and the german Troops with heavy equipment for the Mobile Medevac center :



and the German Contingent with legendary MAN 7 to Truck



and the Fuchs 6 Wheel Troop-Transporter Armoured

Is this the squad that I have heard very little of that will be a mixture of European troops to sort of...defend Europe? I know very little on this for it is rather hushed in Britain.

Interesting pictures!

What's up with the flower gun on top?

Somebody from Luxembourg was in a "peace" day mode...

EU Battle group ... what a joke. With all the bureaucracy in our lovely union any war will be long over before they decide to send'em. Flawed idea, but I suppose they wanted it to grow into some kind of EU army.
Pointless.

before any deployment of the EU Battlegroups, all head of states, PMs, presidents etc, must reach a consensus in the European Council. More problems, they use the Nato structure for all the activity. The missions they are supposed to conduct comes from the West European Union (WEU) called the Petersburg´s Tasks. They include Peace keeping, Peace enforcement, stabilisation missions, rescue missions (when EU citizens must be evacuated from an hostile location) support a nation within the union which is a victim of terrorism, after the tsunami disaster 2004, they will do rescue mission of such events as well. The major problem with the EU is the lack of article 5 as is the foundation of Nato. Every country can decide to not participate if they want. The Battlegroups (13) and two are on high alert for deployment.

The whole development of the this is based opon the faliures of the two wars in the Balkans and how Europe handle them. I have worked with this to try to figure out how Europe can manage crisis events, with in radios of 60 000km around Bryssel. It requre the major powers in Europe wants to participate, they do not often want that. The French, the Brits, and the Germans are not agree often.

I do not believe this will ever work, with limited forces perhaps, such as the Operation Artemis in Congo 2003. less violent operations perhaps, the civilian parts of the Petersbergs tasks perhaps, support with elections, natural disasters, and other events such the OSCE does. Real military operations within the peace enforcement, ask Nato instead. I am bashing EU I know.

take care

Ghostrider

Regardless of what I think about EU battlegroup, here some photos of Polish 17 Mechanised Brigade, part of 1st EU battlegroup.

Well they certaingly look ready to battle the cold! Oh and thanks for the pics! They're great!

In the follow LINk two Pictures with CV 9035 NL

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pzbrig1...in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pzbrig15/6204837531/