CIOR President Colonel (R) Chris Argent (UK) attended the National Reserve Forces Committee (NRFC) Summer Plenary Meeting in Warsaw on 10 and 11 July. The President was warmly welcomed as a ‘special guest’.
Brussels, 11 July 2019: The Chairman of NATO’s National Reserve Forces Committee (NRFC), Brigadier General Robert Glab (Poland), introduced Colonel Argent to his colleagues as a ‘special guest’ to the meeting. He spoke warmly of the work done by the President in ensuring that the new NRFC-CIOR Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was completed and signed at the CIOR ‘Mid Winter Meeting’ in Brussels in January this year.
The President was accompanied to the meeting by CIOR Assistant Secretary General (SO1 Plans), Lieutenant Colonel Mark Coburn (UK).
Progress on first common project
On the morning of 11 July Colonel Argent informed NRFC on progress already achieved to operationalise the MOU, in particular in launching the NRFC/ CIOR Joint Project on Cyber Defence.
The first outputs from this work will be published around the time of the CIOR Summer Congress in Tallinn Estonia between 4 and 9 August. Then CIOR will progress with the development of an entry-level practitioners course on Cyber Defence, with the aim of holding the first course in the summer of 2020 – under the patronage of a joint NRFC-CIOR committee.
Two more projects awaiting CIOR Council support
The two additional projects, Recruiting & Retention and Employer Support, are already being progressed in CIOR and now await the early decision of CIOR’s Council to provide technological support – which can then be accessed both by NRFC and CIOR, and potentially third parties.
The CIOR President also informed NRFC about upcoming events commencing with the organization’s Summer Congress in August, with an estimated attendance of some 550 serving Reservists.
The two reserve organizations have agreed that a CIOR Liaison Officer (ASG Plans) should attend the NRFC Staff Officers Meeting in October, in Budapest, along with the lead of the CIOR Cyber Defence Working Group, and that a CIOR Delegation of about 10 officers will attend the NRFC Winter Plenary Meeting being held in 2020 in Norfolk, Virginia (USA).
An invitation is being extended to the Chairman and Secretary General of NRFC to attend the CIOR autumn meeting, also known as the ‘In-Between-Meeting’ in Edinburgh in November.
Looking forward to further co-operation
Both the NRFC chairman and the CIOR president recognised these 2 days as an important milestone in delivering the intent of the MOU, and said that they were looking forward to further close co-operation as the various strands of work develop.