TDN Have Back To Back Conferences In Prague This Month

The hotel bar at the Prague Marriott.

Officers and suits are trooping back to the Czech capital this week for Combat Engineer. As its name reveals the conference from November 1 to 3 is devoted to structures, logistics, and built environments for military operations. The event organizer, The Development Network UK (TDNUK), have waived registration fees at the venue–the Prague Marriott–for “all serving military and public sector personnel.”

Now on its third installment Combat Engineer begins with a “Focus Day” devoted to power solutions, i.e. electricity, for NATO and allied installations on deployment. The next two days of the conference proper are filled to the brim with brief sessions hosted by defense ministry types and NATO commanders. On November 2 the focus is on combat engineers’ role in “camp solutions.”

The subject matter on November 3 is about mobility and its relevance to expeditionary forces. The conference ends at 15:15 with a chairman’s summary delivered by Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Sir Mark Mans of the British Army’s Royal Engineers.

21st Century Asian Arms Race (21AAR) is a media partner for Combat Engineer.

Hardly two weeks after Combat Engineer the same crowd, with slight differences in role, branch, and uniform, are returning to the Prague Marriott for Combat Helicopter. Like other themed conferences organized by TDNUK this three-day affair is about various applications for rotorcraft.

TDN are again waiving registration fees for military and government employees. The “Focus Day” features three streams where subject matter lectures are grouped together: The first stream is devoted to live and simulation training. The second stream is about maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO). The third stream is concerned with firepower and performance.

The conference proper begins on November 16 and its broad theme is offensive capabilities, with lectures on future priorities, weapons, and avionics. On November 17 the emphasis is on “ensuring overmatch” or, in other words, preparing tomorrow’s helicopters for multirole operations.

The conference ends at 15:45 with closing remarks by Air Marshall Greg Bagwell of the Royal Air Force.

Both events are the last in TDNUK’s sizable roster of defense-centric conferences for 2016. The organizer is hitting Warsaw in late January 2017 for Electronic Warfare.