News From the CTC: Saber Guardian 17 ISB Operations

In July 2017, more than 25,000 service members from 22+ nations participated in one of the largest exercises in the Black Sea Region as part of exercise Saber Guardian 17 (SG 17). Key highlights of the exercise included the successful insertion of multinational airborne and special operations forces into multiple locations of the joint operations area and the use of an intermediate staging base (ISB) in Hungary to build combat power enroute.The goal of this paper is to provide insights, lessons learned, best practices, tactics, techniques, and procedures and other observations made by Observer Coach/Trainer (OC/T) teams from the Joint Multinational Readiness Center on the complexities of ISB operations during SG 17.