Observations and interviews during BULGARIA 2025 Exercise
NATO and Bulgaria will hold one of the world’s largest and most complex emergency management exercises – BULGARIA 2025. Almost 1,200 participants from over 40 countries and organisations are heading to Montana in Bulgaria to train and exercise procedures for the Local Emergency Management Authority (LEMA), the On-Site Operations Co-ordination Centre (OSOCC), the Urban Search and Rescue Coordination Cell (UCC) and the Emergency Medical Teams Coordination Cell (EMTCC), the Joint Air/Drone Operations Coordination Cell (JADOCC), as well as liaison officers and team leaders of participating responding teams.
Participants in Exercise BULGARIA 2025 will come from:
– NATO Allies: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye, United Kingdom, and the United States.
– NATO partners: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrein, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, the European Union, Japan, Jordan, Iraq, Ireland, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Republic of Moldova, Tunisia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The scenario is based on a complex emergency, which includes natural disasters, extreme weather, population movements, health threats, and information threats, which will affect the civil population and critical infrastructure in the area around the city of Montana.
The exercise is organised by NATO’s Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) and the Directorate General Fire Safety and Civil Protection (DG FSCP) of the Ministry of Interior, Republic of Bulgaria. BULGARIA 2025 will last from 7 to 12 September 2025. For more information, please visit eadrcc.cmdrcoe.org
Organisers of BULGARIA 2025 offer a unique opportunity to gather information for crisis management-related research in conditions similar to actual disasters, and to use the Exercise as a testing ground. The application submitted by the GEXTRECS consortium has been accepted, together with 38 other proposals from 15 NATO member states, 2 NATO partners, and an international organization. During the Exercise, research will be conducted by approximately 110 people.
One of the main objectives of the GEXTRECS project is to examine the needs of potential users of GOVSATCOM services in the field of crisis management. We have prepared a dedicated questionnaire for participants of the BULGARIA 2025 Exercise who are directly involved in crisis response at national, regional or local level. It also applies to non-governmental aid and humanitarian organisations, which could use GOVSATCOM services to coordinate operations in disaster-stricken areas. Questions included in the survey have been selected in such a way as to enable the definition of users’ requirements and expectations of a secure end-to-end SATCOM service in the context of extreme and mass crisis situations. No personal or sensitive information will be collected through the survey.
We will also present participants with the Dynamic Planner prototype, which has been developed to support optimal planning of limited satellite communication resources. Another destination to pursue our research is awaiting!
