The “Multinational Land Force” in Udine recently completed an international wargame exercise. The Austrian observer and liaison officer of the “Land Force”, Colonel Volkmar Ertl, was also present. The officer of the Austrian Armed Forces played a key role in planning and controlling the exercise.
Special form of exercise
The idea for this type of exercise was developed last year by the head of the permanent planning staff of the Multinational Land Force, Colonel Corrado Valle. The basic idea was to develop a new method in which several battalion staffs of the partner armies could train together with university students in an exercise at three different command levels. More than one hundred military personnel, professors and students from Austria, Italy, Hungary, North Macedonia and Slovenia took part in this wargaming exercise. The initial situation, the country descriptions of three states and the procedure for the military confrontation were developed by students from the three partner universities in Budapest, Ljubljana and Trieste in close cooperation with officers from the permanent planning staff of the Multinational Land Force. https://militaeraktuell.at/2025-bundesheer-plant-33-auslandsuebungen/ The rules of the game for the exercise were developed by the permanent planning staff of the Multinational Land Force on the basis and foundation of the wargaming method in order to be able to train on three interacting levels. The strategic-political, operational and tactical levels were then mapped and practiced in the exercise itself.
Different training levels
At the strategic level, a conflict between three fictitious states was simulated, which were represented by three student teams of different nationalities. In the conflict, the wargaming teams were required to focus primarily on the areas of politics, military, economy, social affairs, infrastructure and information, and to develop and apply suitable measures to prevent and mitigate conflictual developments and achieve an advantage for their own state.
The Multinational Land Force was responsible for managing the exercise. Italian, Austrian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Macedonian officers and non-commissioned officers as well as professors and students from the three partner universities were integrated into the exercise management team. In addition to refereeing and controlling the exercise, the exercise command was also responsible for presenting the role of international organizations such as the United Nations and other states and NGOs. In addition, the command of the “Land Force” translated decisions from the strategic level into tactical orders and transferred the situation report from the tactical level to the state command level. At the tactical level, the four participating battalion staffs were also required to carry out wargaming based on the rules of the game developed by the Multinational Land Force. The battalion staffs of the 5th Italian Alpine Regiment, the 2nd Italian Reconnaissance Regiment “Piemonte”, the 30th Hungarian Mechanized Infantry Battalion and the 10th Slovenian Infantry Battalion were able to implement their execution plans and test the pros and cons of their decisions.
New opportunity for multinational cooperation
The exercise enabled university students and researchers to put their studies in political and social sciences and military science into practice in an international context and in interaction with the command and multinational battalion staffs of the Multinational Land Force. For the participating battalion staffs, it was a very good opportunity to train the leadership of battalion battle groups in the course of offensive and defensive operations, taking into account combined arms combat. Planned as a series of exercises for combat exercises, the wargaming exercise offered a new opportunity for multinational cooperation, in which new training methods can be tested and cooperation between science and the military can be further strengthened.
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