“It was a very good meeting,” said the Commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast (MNC NE) Lieutenant General Rainer Korff about the 38th session of the Corps Committee held at Baltic Barracks on 28 and 29 April 2010.
A lot has changed in terms of manning within the Corps Committee itself and the Headquarters since the last Corps Committee. The meeting of new members of the Corps Committee and the Command Group made this session unique, said Lieutenant Colonel Lothar Hoffman, responsible for organising the meeting.
As usual, the whole Corps Committee Meeting was divided into three parts. First, the Headquarters members addressed the Corps Committee. The Commander Lieutenant General Rainer Korff presented the ongoing issues and major topics for discussions, the most important ones being drawing the vision paper concerning the future of the Corps, conducting the structure review and updating the Training & Exercise Calendar in relation to the next Corps mission assignment to Afghanistan in 2014. As the Commander said already after the meeting: “We were successful because we had the opportunity to present a lot of issues that will influence our nearest and far future.” Other topics raised during this session referred to e.g. the use of the Corps’ Command, Control and Information System SZAFRAN, manning or infrastructure. General Korff underlined that he was very satisfied with the fine performance of the Headquarters members who were able to prepare all necessary briefings despite the reduced manning of the Headquarters.
After the internal discussions conducted by the Corps Committee members, the final part of the meeting took place, during which the Headquarters members were informed about the findings made by the Corps Committee on behalf of the Framework Nations – Denmark, Germany and Poland. In general, all concepts presented by the Corps have received a green light and shall now be further developed. “My idea is to create a good team that could be very efficient so that we could speed up different processes on the national level and be as much positively responsive to the Corps Command Group requests or concerns as possible,” the Chairman of the Corps Committee Colonel Kazimierz Wójcik elaborated on the future work of the Corps Committee and his vision of the chairmanship. As Lieutenant Colonel Hoffman mentioned, by the decision of the Chairman, the better involvement of sub-working groups which are supporting the Corps Committee would increase the efficiency of the work of the Corps Committee and lead to faster decisions.
“We have achieved our aim to start a new era of developing, of transformation,” General Korff summarized the 38th Corps Committee meeting with satisfaction. “The time for changes in our Headquarters is given now, between the missions,” he said. The Commander also found it very important to present all ideas to the Corps Committee without waiting till the mission in Afghanistan ends in August 2010. “My decision was to do it now. The Corps Committee members were really happy to see that our intention is to bring the Corps forward, to make it state of the art, to make it attractive to other nations, modern and well prepared for next missions,” General Korff said.
