{"id":58600,"date":"2025-02-01T22:31:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-01T21:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=58600"},"modified":"2026-02-01T03:13:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T02:13:44","slug":"latvia-shows-spanish-military-vehicles-in-the-shield-strike-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/02\/01\/latvia-shows-spanish-military-vehicles-in-the-shield-strike-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"Latvia shows Spanish military vehicles in the Shield Strike exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NATO's Multinational Brigade in Latvia continues its exercises to keep its soldiers trained.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/12\/01\/more-leopard-2-tanks-in-latvia-after-spain-and-canada-now-arriving-from-poland\/\">More Leopard 2 tanks in Latvia: after Spain and Canada, now arriving from Poland<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/11\/18\/the-spanish-participation-in-a-parade-in-latvia-with-soldiers-and-armoured-vehicles\/\">The Spanish participation in a parade in Latvia with soldiers and armoured vehicles<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p><strong>The most recent of these exercises was Shield Strike,<\/strong> in which military contingents from allied countries participating in the Multinational Brigade, including Spain, trained <strong>alongside soldiers and vehicles from the 2nd Battalion of the Mechanized Infantry Brigade of the Latvian Army<\/strong>, based in \u0100da\u017ei, where the NATO Multinational Brigade is also located, and which also has its own maneuvering field to carry out these exercises.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Spain has been participating in this deployment since 2017<\/strong>, within the framework of NATO's eFP (Enhanced Forward Presence) operation following Russia's illegal annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea. <strong>NATO's initial battalion-type unit in Latvia has increased its numbers<\/strong> following Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine and Moscow's growing threats against our allies in the Baltic Sea area.<\/p>\n<p>This Thursday, <strong>the aforementioned Latvian Brigade published<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/1GUY4RM2Km\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a series of photos on its Facebook page<\/a> that include several of Spanish military vehicles, most of them belonging to the <strong> Brigade \"Extremadura\" XI  of the Army<\/strong>, which recently relieved the Brigade \"Arag\u00f3n\" I in this operation to support Latvia against the Russian threat. You can see the aforementioned photos of Spanish vehicles here (click on each image to see it enlarged).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300955704_a4efdd4cfb_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300955704_c2b2b4ddbc_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>A Leopard 2E main battle tank<\/strong>. In addition to Spain, two other countries of the NATO Multinational Brigade in Latvia are contributing Leopard 2 main battle tanks: Canada, with Leopard 2A4M CAN, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/12\/01\/more-leopard-2-tanks-in-latvia-after-spain-and-canada-now-arriving-from-poland\/\">Poland, which recently deployed Leopard 2PL<\/a>. Below we see <strong>a VAMTAC ST-5 equipped with a Spike anti-tank missile launcher<\/strong>. The vehicle is covered with a camouflage net.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54299841557_ec72aa9bfb_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54299841557_011454e53e_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the following three photos we see <strong>an ASCOD Pizarro infantry fighting vehicle (ICV)<\/strong>. In addition to contributing to this protection and deterrence mission, the presence of this Spanish vehicle in Latvia has ended up being beneficial for the Spanish industry, since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/01\/30\/the-success-story-of-the-ascod-armoured-vehicle-derived-from-the-spanish-pizarro-ifv\/\">this week Latvia has signed the purchase of 42 ASCOD vehicles<\/a>, derived from the Spanish Pizarro, after the Latvian Army had the opportunity to get to know this Spanish ICV first-hand for eight years.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968058_7adf93d5bf_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968058_5a0a62a9c5_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712361_31141392b8_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712361_ae42db9a64_z.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968073_0e3b1253e8_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968073_6679d168fd_z.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally, four photos of <strong>M-113 armoured tracked transports<\/strong>, a very old vehicle but still very useful. The model in the last three photos is an <strong>M-113 VCZ sapper combat vehicle<\/strong>. The Army has 60 M-113s of this variant, which are distinguished by being equipped with a pusher shovel on their front part and a winch on their left front part. In the second photo we see the <strong>12.7 mm Browning M-2 heavy machine gun<\/strong> that these vehicles carry next to the commander's hatch.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712341_68e9577e60_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712341_b4b1910bd8_z.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968153_61b8536899_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300968153_33b4b87528_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54301147570_8334ffe6df_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54301147570_cbabf8c0fb_z.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712431_40e9339758_k.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54300712431_071ce98d27_z.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; border:0px;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NATO&#8217;s Multinational Brigade in Latvia continues its exercises to keep its soldiers trained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,11544],"tags":[11254,7979,22558,5831,10707,17903,7973,7515,10557,1602],"class_list":["post-58600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-army","tag-adazi","tag-ascod-pizarro","tag-brigade-extremadura-xi","tag-browning-m2","tag-latvia","tag-latvian-army","tag-leopardo-2e","tag-m-113","tag-spanish-army","tag-uro-vamtac"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 01:54:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}