Home  /  Media Center  /  News  /  2020  /  LANDCOM HOSTS ANNUAL NATO LAND ENGINEERS CONFERENCE, REMOTELY

IZMIR, Turkey - NATO Allied Land Command hosted the annual NATO Land Engineers Conference (NLEC) from their Izmir headquarters May 27-28, 2020. This is the first time the conference has been held primarily using video teleconference technology due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

The yearly meeting is an opportunity for the NATO military engineer community to come together and discuss current work strands, issues, and challenges, and is normally attended in person by representatives from across Allied Command Operations (ACO), NATO Command and Force Structures (NCS & NFC), and other NATO land domain commands. These representatives instead converged electronically from their separate locations onto the VTC screens in LANDCOM headquarters.

Canadian Army Colonel Martin Dufour, LANDCOM’s Engineer Division Assistant Chief of Staff, said this year’s meeting was just as successful as in past years.

We felt that we had to hold the conference despite the travel restrictions in place since the current situation has slowed down progress on various issues.

Canadian Army Colonel Martin Dufour (left),  NATO Allied Land Commmand's Engineer Division Assistant Chief of Staff,opens the annual NATO Land Engineers Conference (NLEC) at LANDCOM's Izmir headquarters May 27-28, 2020. This is the first time the conference has been held primarily using video teleconference technology due to coronavirus travel restrictions.

While there was no specific theme aligned with the conference, it was an opportunity for the entire group to deliver and receive relevant updates from SHAPE, JFCs and the wider military engineer (MILENG) community.

“We sent out a number of agenda recommendations in advance of the NLEC and filtered recommendations from NATO MILENG organisations,” said British Army Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hulme, GENG Operations and Training Branch Head. “We then focused the NLEC on the common key themes.”

The key agenda items selected for focused discussion included Wide Wet gap Crossing capabilities, Counter-Mobility Operations, and Training and Interoperability.

For Polish Army Lieutenant Colonel Piotr Tomkow, it was his first NELC experience.

“I found the NLEC to be a very useful military engineer (MILENG) update. We received some very interesting updates and all participants were actively engaged in discussion on the key agenda topics,” he said. “We agreed on a number of actions and in some instances linked up with other MILENG organisations to conduct work collaboratively moving forward.”

In a foreshadowing of next year’s conference, the consensus from group discussions was it will likely include MILENG lessons learned from the Combat Readiness Evaluations (CREVAL) for Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and NATO Rapid Deployable Corps Turkey, planned for November and December respectively. Additionally, there will likely be more focus on training gaps and interoperability requirements.