Multinational Centre of Excellence for Mountain Warfare


Multinational Centre of Excellence for Mountain Warfare is one of NATO Centres of Excellence, located in Bohinjska Bela, Slovenia. It is "responsible for training individuals and units for operation in the mountains and other terrains difficult to pass".
Currently Centre is not fully accredited; full accreditation is planned for 2015.

Overview

MN COEMW is based on the Slovenian Military Mountain School, which was formed in 1996. In 2004 school was chosen as site of future COE.
On 15 November 2011 Slovenia signed cooperation agreement with Austria, Hungary and Italy regarding training of soldiers from these three countries in Bohinjska Bela; with this Centre was upgraded to multinational level. Also several other countries are currently planning to apply for the membership.

Mission

Primary mission of the Centre is "to support the transformation of the forces and assets of mountain warfare". The four core working areas are as follows: education and training, doctrine and concept development, capability development and support to experimentation and lessons identified and lessons learned processes.
Currently Centre provides following courses: Military Mountaineering, Combat Decision-Making in the Mountains, Small Unit Tactics in the Mountains, Surviving in the Mountains, Military Alpine Climbing, Military Mountain Rescue and Military Mountain Guiding.