“I congratulate my staff for having accomplished the mission so flawlessly and seamlessly,” said Lieutenant General Thorsten Poschwatta, Commander of the German JFAC. “Together we have proven that we are ready to lead Allied joint and combined air operations across the European NATO theatre. All missions and sorties that we planned, coordinated and executed underlined the ability of Air Power and demonstrated the cohesion of the Alliance to protect NATO airspace at all times,” he added.
“Let me first thank Lieutenant General Thorsten Poschwatta, Commander of the German JFAC, and his team for standing in so professionally. They have risen to the challenge and done so in style,” said the AIRCOM Deputy Commander, Air Marshal Johnny Stringer. “Thanks to the German JFAC, NATO Air Power simply continued their work commanding and controlling Allied Air Forces which are so essential to NATO’s enduring activities, be it along the eastern flank or in support of our 360-degree approach. During the past weeks, my team at Allied Air Command never had to worry about real-world matters because you took care of them. And we could focus on capability building and skill enhancement during exercise Steadfast Jupiter. This has been key to us,” he added.
The German JFAC is a multinational command and control centre that plans and executes the delivery of NATO Air Power across the entire spectrum of joint operations. The picture shows the JFAC at work during Germany-led live-fly exercise Air Defender 23 in the summer. Archive photo by Maurice Hofmann.
For crisis response operations, NATO’s Air Command and Control structures are based on standing up a JFAC – a command and control centre that plans and executes the delivery of NATO Air Power across the entire spectrum of joint operations. Allied Air Command is responsible for the standing up of the NATO Command Structure’s JFAC that will be specifically tailored in size for any NATO operation.
Depending on the size of the operation, the JFAC can be augmented from all Allied Air Command entities or from other NATO Force Structure or national JFACs. Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have a national JFAC capability. At Allied Air Command, a permanent full-time "Core" team is tasked with the preparation of the NATO Command Structure Joint Force Air Component to undertake the full spectrum of Air Operations and to prosecute Air Operations in accordance with the Commander’s intent. They provide a wide variety of Subject Matter Experts from the full spectrum of NATO military and civilian specialist areas that may be routinely called-upon to furnish advice to the Core JFAC.