West Virginia's National Guard Bureau, alongside Qatar, is helping plan joint exercise Eagle Resolve 2025.

The West Virginia Army National Guard's Army Interagency Training and Education Center (AITEC) is known nationwide for its specialized training and skilled personnel. It includes the Cyber Protection Team - Mission Element (CPT-ME).

CPT-MEs are small teams of highly skilled personnel responsible for "providing preventative cybersecurity expertise, trend analysis and response to critical state and local networks essential to government and private critical industry functions," according to the West Virginia National Guard.

AITEC's CPT-MEs will oversee a large part of planning Eagle Resolve, specifically focusing on infusing their advanced cybersecurity knowledge and capabilities into the planned exercises.

Eagle Resolve is a US Central Command (CENTCOM) all-domain exercise that rotates between partners in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.

Every few years Eagle Resolve changes its focus to different areas of defense. This shift helps participants stay apprised of emerging threats and fosters interoperability and expertise sharing across partner nations.

The 2025 iteration of Eagle Resolve will focus on cybersecurity as both state and non-state actors from around the world have increasingly turned to digital attacks. From energy grids to intellectual property, cyber attacks threaten all facets of life with sabotage, spying and theft.

Eagle Resolve will convene Gulf Cooperation Coalition partners, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as a range of US military units.

The 2025 exercise is set to include "an air component field training exercise, a virtual command post exercise, and an advanced cyber range exercise, where cyber threats and solutions will be simulated in real-time," West Virginia's National Guard said in a statement.

Partnership with Qatar

Qatar and West Virginia's National Guard have been formal partners since June 2021 via the State Partnership Program (SPP).

West Virginia and Qatar had been conducting training exercises since 2018 to build the relationship. Eagle Resolve will mark a high point of the relationship thus far.

The SPP is a major conduit of military-to-military engagements for the United States.

Spun out of the early 1990s Joint Contact Team Program, the SPP pairs each of the 54 US states and territories with foreign partner nations.

As of December, the SPP includes 105 partnerships with 115 nations around the world.

Together, partners conduct training exercises and share expertise. The program focuses on building collaboration and cooperation across the civilian and military domains.