Friday 13 September 2024 marked the conclusion of the multinational Special Operations Forces Exercise (SOFEX) “ORION – 24” which focused on various training objectives within the scope of the Special Operations and their core tasks.
On Thursday 12 September the Distinguished Visitors’ Day (DV-Day) of the exercise took place in Megara region, Attica, during which a series of complex operational SOF capabilities were showcased, as follows:
● Military Free Fall (MFF).
● Maritime Interdiction Operation – Visit Boat Search Seizure (MIO – VBSS).
● Direct Action (DΑ) Mission .
● Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) operations .
● Over the beach operations (Amphibious Assault).
● Aerial Delivery mission utilizing Container Delivery System (CDS).
● Patrol Exfiltration using SPIES (Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction System).
● MFF display jump.
The DV-Day was attended by the:
● Deputy Minister of the National Defence Mr Ioannis Kefalogiannis.
● Chief of the Hellenic National Defence General Staff (H.N.D.G.S.), General Dimitrios Houpis.
● Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff (H.A.G.S.) Lieutenant General Georgios Kostidis, Chief of the Hellenic Navy General Staff (H.N.G.S.) Vice Admiral Dimitrios Kataras GRC N, Chief of the Hellenic Air Force General Staff (H.AF.G.S) Lieutenant General Dimosthenis Grigoriadis, Commander of the Special Warfare Command (S.W.C.) Lieutenant General Prokopios Mauraganis, Deputy Chief of the Hellenic Police Lieutenant General Paschalis Syritoudis as the representative of the Chief of the Hellenic Police, Commodore Ioannis Papadakis as the representative of the Commandant of the Hellenic Coast Guard (H.C.G.).
● Colonel Andreas Prodromou as the representative of the Chief of the General Staff of the Cyprus National Guard Lieutenant General Georgios Tsitsikostas.
● Ambassador of the Republic of North Macedonia to Greece Mrs Lidija Boshkovska and the Chargé d’ Affaires of the Embassy of Romania to Greece Mrs Mioara Pitut.
● Senior Officers of the Armed Forces of the participating countries as well as the Defence Attaches.
SOFEX “ORION” has been conducted since 2018 on a yearly basis, and as of 2021 on a multinational level, with SOF participating troops from friendly and allied countries. In this year’s “ORION” iteration, troops from Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Italy, North Macedonia, Romania and the United States of America took part, as well as observers from Austria, Egypt and Poland.
