A nearly two-week multinational military exercise organized and coordinated by Greek army general staff, code-named “Orion-25” winds up on Friday.
The “ORION” exercise has been conducted annually since 2018, and since 2021 has included participation by special forces units from friendly and allied countries.
During this year’s exercises, personnel and equipment were deployed by the armed forces of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Italy, North Macedonia, Romania, Switzerland, the United States and host country Greece.
All of Greece’s top military leaders were on hand to observe the exercises at various stages and during a distinguished visitors day on Thursday, along with diplomats accredited to Greece and foreign military liaisons officers.

The exercised mostly involved special forces’ operations on land, sea and air and was conducted in western Attica prefecture, west of Athens proper, at the Pachi Megara range and the waters of the same-name bay.
Units of participating nations engaged in parachute jumps, maritime interdiction operations/visit boat search seizure training, direct action and close combat attacks, amphibious assaults, drone training, use of airdropped container delivery on a battlefield setting and evacuation of personnel via Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction Systems (SPIES) as well as retrieving a boat by a CH-47 helicopter.