The Army begins the main specific annual exercise for 2019

Preparing for the exercise

Preparing for the exercise

From the 8th to the 24th of November, the Army will carry out Toro 2019, its main annual land exercise. The exercise began between September 2018 and January 2019 with a first stage in which the concept and specifications of the exercise were developed. The planning was carried out in the second stage, from January to October of this year and the exercise will be conducted in the current, third stage, including deployment, tactical operations and the withdrawal of the participating forces.

The Chief of Staff of the Army, Army General Francisco Javier Varela and his Italian counterpart, Lieutenant General Salvatore Farina, are scheduled to attend Toro 2019.

Under the command of the Castillejos Division – around 6000 troops with 750 vehicles and 12 helicopters – the army is focused on conducting different missions to improve the training from division level to tactical group level.

Toro 19 will be carried out simultaneously in different locations: the San Gregorio Manoeuvre Ground (Zaragoza), Chinchilla Manoeuvre Ground (Albacete), Jaime I Base (Bétera, Valencia), General Menacho Base (Bótoa, Badajoz), General Morillo Base (Pontevedra), Cabo Noval Base (Asturias) and in the Monegros area (Zaragoza-Huesca), which reflects the importance, the degree of difficulty and the coordination of the activities to be carried out and also the logistical effort which the exercise requires.

Specifically, the majority of the army will be deployed in the National Training Centre in San Gregorio (Zaragoza), including the Headquarters of the Castillejos Division and the 1st Aragon Brigade with all of their troops. In the National Training Centre in Chinchilla (Albacete) troops from the 1st Almogávares Paratroopers Brigade who, amongst other things, will carry out two air mobile operations with parachute jumps in the Monegros area where the 11th Spain Cavalry Regiment is deployed. On the other hand, it will be the first time that the drones (RPAS) from the 1st Intelligence Regiment participate along with other units in the National Training Centre in San Gregorio. The will be deployed in the Soria-Garray airfield. From there they will operate the flying system in the San Gregorio Training Ground.

A mechanised Italian task force (comprised of 400 soldiers) will also take part, with more than 100 vehicles and a digitalised command post, which will allow them to continue improving integration into international structures as well as interoperability with foreign forces.

The Toro 19 Exercise has been designed in a way that optimises the management of credits and means to support instruction and training. For this reason, it will bring together various exercises at Division, Brigade and Tactical Group level in one single exercise, establishing training objectives for each of the levels (multi-step).

Every year, the Army carries out a main general training exercise. Through this exercise, they aim to maintain and improve interoperability between all of the participating units. The aim is to test their preparation, readiness and operability in order to adapt to any kind of scenario and provide the decisive capacities to defend the interest of Spain and its allies in a current and future operational environment in which the character of land operations will be crucial. For this, it is extremely important to have an army which is perfectly prepared to face any present and future challenges which may arise.

The scenario proposed by the Toro 19 exercise allows for the units’ training to be oriented to offensive actions which are carried out in high intensity conflicts in a generalised combat operation
against a similar enemy (peer to peer). Equally, it allows them to carry out activities which increase interoperability and the capacity to integrate into international structures.