From 20 to 23 October 2014 JALLC successfully hosted the 11th NATO Lessons Learned Conference, held at the Portuguese Military Academy in Amadora, Portugal. In today’s rapidly evolving international security environment, NATO is faced with emerging challenges. Against this backdrop and taking all that NATO has done and is doing to meet those emerging challenges, this year’s conference theme was Learning from Experiences, Strengthening the Alliance. Panels of distinguished speakers and Subject Matter Experts within NATO delivered interesting presentations and discussions on three key topics within the conference theme: Lessons from Operations and Exercises from the Maritime Perspective, Improving Lessons Learned Practices, Land Approach to Learning from Operations and Exercises. In addition to the panels, several updates from various organizations and nations were well received by the audience.

In total, over 250 attendees from 25 NATO nations, nine PfP Nations (Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Finland, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Sweden, and the Ukraine) and four other nations (Jordan, New Zealand, Mongolia, and Australia) participated in the 2014 NATO Lessons Learned Conference. 

From within NATO there were attendees from the NATO Command Structure and NATO Force Structure HQs, Centres of Excellence, both the NATO HQs, and the NATO Standardization Office. The EU Military Staff and the International Committee of the Red Cross were also present, completing the broad and diverse scope of attending participants this year.

The Final Conference report will be released no later than 21 November 2014.