SEEBRIG’s Concept of Operation
South-Eastern Europe Brigade (SEEBRIG) is currently a brigade-size formation established by seven participating nations in order to contribute to the regional security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, and to foster cooperation among the South-Eastern European countries.The Initiative is consistent with the purposes and the principles of the United Nations Charter.The Force will be available for possible employment in UN or OSCE-mandated NATO-led or EU-led conflict prevention and other peace support operations.It could also participate in “Coalition of the willing” type international initiatives.The force will also function within the spirit of PfP.
SEEBRIG may be committed in one of two ways:
– as a part of a larger (divisional) formation, most often in a NATO or EU led operation. Given the size and overall capabilities of the SEEBRIG, this is the standard option of the employment; or
– autonomously as a self-containing theater formation.
Autonomous employment may be appropriate for small scale operations, usually in the area of humanitarian initiatives associated with very low risks of conflict events and implies specific provisions and additional logistics and command assets. SEEBRIG is “on-call” land force and has its units located in their home base location. The units allocated to SEEBRIG will be committed under a task force principle for exercises and operations upon the decisions of the participating Nations and appropriate joint direction and coordination of the Politico-Military Steering Committee (PMSC). The SEEBRIG Commander assumes the command of the subordinate units after the transfer of authority.
Under the terms of the MPFSEE Agreement, SEEBRIG is available for employment in UN or OSCE – mandated peace support and humanitarian operations led by NATO or the EU once operational. It was declared by the Chairman of PMSC as operationally ready May 1st, 2001 to the UN, OSCE, NATO and EU, and an Initial Force offer for participating in a NATO-led Peace operation was forwarded to SHAPE in November 2002.
In April 2003, PMSC declared SEEBRIG ready to participate in a Peace Support Operation under NATO Command. In September 2003, first visit coming from NATO AFSOUTH, Naples, came to HQ SEEBRIG in order to start the Evaluation process. After other two meetings between HQ SEEBRIG and NATO RHQ representatives, the criteria and the steps of evaluation process were agreed in order to declare the level of “SEEBRIG readiness” for PSOs. In this regard, an exercise (Command Field Exercise) SEVEN-STARS 04 was conducted in Romania, in October 2004. After the exercise, the recommendation of the report forwarded to SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe), SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) was “to formally certify that HQ SEEBRIG has attained FOC status with limitations to deploy to a NATO led PSO in Balkans.”
Also in the framework of operational readiness, OSCE High Level Planning Group (HLPG)/Vienna keeps contactwith HQ SEEBRIG for exchange views on military peacekeeping operations. The HLPG team and the staff of SEEBRIG have a dialogue on topics such as common interests in the field of peacekeeping, the role of OSCE in the hot spots and finally a discussion about the possibilities of the role of the headquarters in the future OSCE peacekeeping mission.
For the last twenty years the Brigade has passed an intensive way of organizational development and enhancement of its operational readiness. The military personnel of the currently six participating ations countries are working harmoniously together under the motto “One team – one mission”.