The visit of the Commander of the Finnish Army, Lieutenant General Pasi Välimäki, took place today at the operational headquarters of NRDC-ITA. He was welcomed by the Commander of NRDC-ITA, Lieutenant General Lorenzo D'Addario.
The meeting was held in the spirit of sharing experiences and seeking possible areas of convergence, with particular attention also to the common, future challenges of NATO, in relation to the role assumed last July by NRDC-ITA as Allied Reaction Force (ARF) to support the Alliance in its three main tasks: deterrence and defence, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security.
The Commander of the Finnish Army, in the meetings with the Commander and the staff of NRDC-ITA, presented an interesting overview of the situation of his Armed Forces, providing useful food for thought both in the context of international cooperation and with regard to the new commitment of the Milan command that will conduct several exercises in the coming months.
ARF is a completely new concept, resulting from a political decision taken at the NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023, in order to enable SACEUR to have readily deployable forces (in all domains), to achieve results more immediately than in the past and to provide an effective response to possible crisis situations in all types of operations.
The designation of NRDC-ITA as an ARF command with multi-domain capabilities and reporting to several multinational assets is a tangible demonstration of Italy's commitment to the Alliance and its objectives of "Deterrence" and "Defense" of the Euro-Atlantic area.
