Details of U.S. Military Assistance Program Unveiled

On February 1 the Georgian Defense Ministry started recruitment of servicemen for participation in a new U.S. military assistance program ? Sustainment and Stability Operations Program (SSOP), which will focus on training Georgian soldiers for coalition support.

For the fiscal year 2005, the U.S. Government is allocating $60.5M for the SSOP, the U.S. Embassy in Georgia reported.

?A main purpose of SSOP is to increase the size of Georgian forces which are capable of deploying and serving in multi-national peacekeeping operations,? the Embassy reported.

Under SSOP, the following units will be trained and equipped:

– 2 infantry battalions from the 21st Brigade;
– one logistics battalion from the 11th Brigade and one log battalion from the 21st Brigade;
– the brigade staffs from the 11th and 21st Brigades;
– the Signal, Reconnaissance, and Engineer companies from the 11th Brigade;
– the Staff from the Land Forces Command;
– an Operations Cell from the Joint Staff.

Additionally, according to the U.S. Embassy, there will be significant improvements and upgrades to the Georgian facilities at their National Training Center in Krtsanisi, including:

1. five barracks buildings that can house one company each, for a total of 650 soldiers;
2. one fully equipped Dining Facility that can seat 600 soldiers;
3. one fully equipped classroom that can hold 120 personnel; can be split into 3 classrooms of 40 each;
4. one fully equipped laundry facility;
5. one Water/sewage treatment facility;
6. Upgrades to the transformer/electricity distribution, includes 2 large generators to provide backup power for the whole camp when city power fails.

This is the second large-scale U.S.-funded military assistance program for Georgia. The United States already allocated USD 64 million to help Georgia in training about 2,400 troops in frames of the Georgia Train-and-Equip Program (GTEP) in 2002-2004.

Together with U.S. military instructors, Georgian servicemen will be trained by those 40 Georgian officers who graduated from an eight-week training program conducted by the U.S. Marine Mobile Training Team last December.