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KRIVOLAK TRAINING AREA, North Macedonia — The 7th Engineer Brigade, in collaboration with the North Macedonian armed forces, hosted the U.S. Army Chief of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Scott Spellmon, on June 4, during construction operations under the Resolute Castle 2024 exercise.
This joint exercise revolves around creating and improving real-world infrastructure to enhance the North Macedonian armed forces’ capabilities to train. The 7th Engineer Brigade deployed the 500th Engineer Support Company and the 902nd Engineer Construction Company which will work alongside the 1st North Macedonian Engineer Battalion and U.S. Navy Seabees.
“This is an excellent opportunity for our engineer battalions that are out in the field to work on collective training that for us, as engineers, we don’t always get at our home station,” said Spellmon. “We don’t fight, and we don’t build things [alone]; we must rely on our international counterparts that are out here with us; with the Navy Seabees that are out here with us. We do this as a team.”
The current building projects are aimed at laying the foundation to bring heavy armor through the Krivolak Training Area for joint training with the North Macedonian military. These projects include: A targetry storage warehouse, a heavy vehicle wash rack, an UAS airstrip, a motor pool, and range road improvements.
According to Brig. Gen. John Lloyd, division commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, North Atlantic Division, the impact of this exercise is not just about construction, but the capacity to increase interoperability and overall readiness across our partner nations, which ultimately is mutually beneficial to everyone.
“It’s really about readiness. It’s great to see the battalion Soldiers getting some real-world training,” said Lloyd, “what really inspired me is that you have a lot of new Soldiers coming straight out of AIT that have never participated in a training exercise so large, and you can tell they are getting a lot of quality training. I think it’s the perfect exercise to improve the readiness of the regiment.”
RC24 is ultimately a mutually beneficial exercise, where improving the training area’s infrastructure will generate a higher quality of training for both U.S. and North Macedonian troops. Even before the cement starts to dry, leaders from both nations are already looking forward towards developing this partnership even further.
“Resolute Castle lets us prepare ourselves for DE25 by allowing us to accept all the participating force packages, allowing for greater integration between our armed forces,” said Brig. Gen. Besnik Emini, the commander of Operations Command Army of the Republic of North Macedonia. “We appreciate that the U.S. Army is here assisting us in building these facilities where our Soldiers can shoot, train, evaluate, and be ready to deploy. This is very important for us because this reinforces the message that we are stronger together!”
Resolute Castle 24 is a USAREUR-AF directed exercise that utilizes U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and NATO engineers to increase partner capacity and strengthen capabilities across NATO’s eastern member states through real-world engineer-related training and the expansion of infrastructure in support of defender-series exercises.
