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Maintain Skills Through Staff Turnover

Calian has developed a training system for NATO NFS HQs where there is high rotation of staff every year, with almost a third of staff being replaced during the summer months. As this makes maintaining consistent skill levels through training especially difficult, Calian helps you maintain skills at the required levels.

Increasingly, NATO HQs are more reliant on their own resources to plan and deliver more demanding and complex exercises with limited people and expertise. With the recent reductions in operational deployments, commanders are more reliant on training to build readiness.

Why use Battlestaff in a Box Training

Calian training meets the core needs of military training for HQ staff using the methods employed at NATO. Our modular approach is designed to your needs and requirements and will be discussed with you every step of the way to ensure your timelines are met.

Timely

  • Advocate-led training in sufficient time to assimilate, reflect, adapt SOPs and processes, before embarking on formal exercises
  • Focuses on what is needed for the next phase, to maximise impact
  • Brings newcomers and augmentees up to speed early, reducing loss of operational capability during a standby period

Tailored

  • Meets the specific requirements of your training audience
  • Leverages the NATO lessons learned processes to highlight emerging issues
  • Focuses on specific processes and teams or working groups
  • Scalable to size of training audience

Hands-On and Active Engagement

Our training is both practical and participative.

Practical

  • Maximize relevant operational experience
  • Provide useful tools
  • Vignettes, based on desired learning outcomes
  • Full set of learning materials, including handbooks and podcasts

Participative

  • Leverage the wisdom in the room
  • Transfer of knowledge through group activities
  • Experiential, with lessons learned through reflection
  • Foster climate of constructive challenge to stimulate fresh thinking
  • Provides a safe environment for learning
  • Encourages delegates to think through implications for HQ in terms of organisation, structures and processes

Experienced Team at Your Service

As members of the original scenario development teams, the Calian SME team that designs and supports all BST activities has significant experience with all scenarios in current NATO use. They are experienced in developing incidents and role-playing during all exercise phases. Their experience provides you with high level joint operational perspectives.

Typical Team

A typical team might include experienced, high-ranking personnel such as:

  • A former 2* field commander, NATO senior adviser and government stabilisation adviser
  • A former 1* logistician and ex-national country director for supreme catering in Afghanistan
  • An original Skolkan 2 scenario developer with an aviation and SHAPE KM/IM/J5 background who literally ‘wrote the book’ on KM and IM
  • A media professional, known for her multiple appearances in most NATO exercises for the past eight years
  • A White Cell coordinator with extensive links throughout the IO/NGO community, who led the largest-ever involvement of civilian organisations in a NATO exercise
  • A former JWC OPR, chief MELMIL, scenario developer, role player and political scientist with unparalleled knowledge of the NATO exercise construct

These resources are augmented, as required, by former ambassadors, top-level members of the EU, SF or any ‘J’ number expert, as well as any SME from the civil community from INTERPOL to humanitarian

Our Experts

Our team has decades of experience in training strategy and planning, complex scenario and scripting, exercise design, development and delivery, operational planning solutions and customized training and mentoring.

Kent Davis

Kent Davis is a bilingual retired Canadian Army senior officer with a demonstrated record of achievement in providing corporate, personnel, and institutional leadership across joint and tri-service operational training.

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John Cullen

John Cullen is Director, Global Defence and Security, servicing NATO, the European Union and European nations. For more than 12 years, John has played a key role in designing, developing and delivering exercises and training events for senior leaders across NATO in support of the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway. With a view to business development and European expansion, he continues to participate in exercise design and training delivery to understand client needs and remain current on crisis management doctrine and processes.

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Howard Chaganis

Howard Chaganis is Director, Operations, Calian UK. After gaining a BSc in Geography at Oxford Brookes University he moved to The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, gaining his commission with The Royal Green Jackets as an Infantry Officer and serving on operations worldwide. On leaving the British Army after 10 years of service, Howard Chaganis has concentrated the majority of his consultancy within NATO, with a particular focus on Scenario development and the command and control elements of large-scale, complex exercises.

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Chesney Clark

Chesney Clark is the Director, Business Development, Calian, UK. He completed his BA/ MA at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, prior to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, gaining a commission as an Officer in the Army Air Corps as a helicopter pilot. Since leaving active service in 2013, Chesney Clark has worked as a Defence consultant, focused on NATO training, exercises and scenario development. Extensive experience in Security Sector Reform training, NATO exercise planning/ execution, and constructing winning teams to support public/ private sector clients.

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David Chupick

Dave Chupick brings to the team decades of combined training experience with the military and as a civilian working for Calian Group Ltd. He’s led and managed many diverse teams, working with clients to design, develop and deliver large complex exercises for the Canadian military, Canadian federal and provincial governments, the African Union and in support of NATO through exercises in the Canadian Army’s High Readiness Program. He’s also part of the project team continuing the evolution of the exercise development software – Calian MaestroEDE.

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Eric Norton

Eric's primary role is to find technology solutions to training problems. He has more than 15 years of experience designing and building software capabilities for Calian’s biggest training contract with the Canadian Army Simulation Centre. His work has predominantly centred on making improvements to the learning environment. So, whether it was building software tools that helped simulations communicate or building tools to help productivity in terms of how we create our learning scenarios, Eric has a deep understanding of military training and exercise environments.

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Rex Barnes

Rex Barnes had a 30+ year career in the UK Royal Marines, with command roles at every rank up to Commanding Officer. On completion of service in 2012, Rex moved to Australia with BAE Systems where he was delivery manager for two LHD amphibious platforms for the Royal Australian Navy. On returning to UK Rex founded and became managing director of GGR Training Limited then moved to Calian as the Manager, Calian, UK in 2022.

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