Exercise Air Defender 2023

Exercise Air Defender 23 wa the largest deployment exercise of air forces in NATO’s history and demonstrated transatlantic solidarity. From June 12-23 2023, up to 10.000 exercise participants from 25 nations with 250 aircraft trained air operations in European airspace under the command of the German Air Force.
The goal was to exercise air operations with allied air forces. The focus was on optimizing and expanding cooperation among participating nations. The scenario is modeled on a NATO Article 5 assistance scenario.

The following nations were participating: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic (staging ground), Denmark, Estonia (staging ground), Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands (staging ground), Norway, Poland (staging ground), Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.
Each exercise area in Germany involved flying by 40–80 aircraft once a day. Around 250 starts of military aircraft were planned every day in Germany. During the day, the three airspace sectors were closed to civil aircraft at certain times. For the exercise, the military airfields in Wunstorf (in Lower Saxony), Schleswig, Hohn (both in Schleswig-Holstein), and Lechfeld (in Bavaria) are used. The airfields Laage (in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Geilenkirchen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Spangdahlem (in Rhineland-Palatinate), Neuburg (Bavaria), Volkel (in the Netherlands), Krzesiny (in Poland) and Čáslav (in the Czech Republic) were included in the large exercise.