What you're focusing on here is mission planning and doctrine. Interoperability and "deployability" isn't really defined in those terms alone but hwo the entire concept works at a systems level. Here is how the EEAW works, from Cold Response 2007:
Exercise Cold Response 2007 was held in Norway from March 7 to March 16. It was what the Norwegians call an invitational exercise – intended mainly for the Norwegian military but with other nations permitted to join. This year, a total of 8500 personnel took part with major foreign participation in the air and special forces aspects of the exercise. The whole exercise followed a scenario based on the Kosovo campaign. Ground forces were sent to bring peace to a troubled province and push out an aggressive foe. The area to be “liberated” in this peacekeeping scenario was located around the airfield of Bardufoss, well above the Artic Circle.
A large multination Air Force, the EPAF Expeditionary Air Wing (EEAW), was assembled well south of the area of operations, at Bodø airbase. The EPAF, or European Participation Air Forces, include the four nations that together bought the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon in the 1970s – the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark – and Portugal, who acquired F-16s later on. This was the first time ever that the five EPAF nations had flown together. Several of the countries had linked up before during operations, for instance in Afghanistan, but never more than three nations at a time.
Each of the EPAF countries sent five F-16s for the exercise, four to fly and one spare. Norway, being the host nation, joined with six aircraft and two spares. All the pilots (twelve from each nation), were veterans and had international experience as well. Germany supported the EEAW with a contingent of three C.160 Transall transport aircraft led, appropriately, by a British exchange pilot.
Bodø is Norway’s main F-16 base with two squadrons stationed. That meant that the visiting countries did not have to bring any support equipment as everything was at hand.
The detachment commander of the EEAW was Belgian Lieutenant-Colonel Alex “Rooster” Roose, the commanding officer of of 350 Squadron, Belgian Air Force. He explained the whole operation.
“The participants in the EEAW have only minor differences in capability and training. There is a high level of commonality. This exercise is meant to show that five small nations can do the same as one lead nation (the United States, GvO). With this commitment we can sustain six aircraft in an operation for three years.” [He's referring to the Belgian commitment. /GD]
All the EPAF F-16’s are in the MLU M4 configuration, meaning they have undergone the Mid-Life Upgrade and received the M4 software with Link 16 capability. Together with a NATO AWACS flying from Urland, Lt-Col Roose commented, EPAF forces have “never had such a complete picture.”
Having so many nations working together would normally create problems, but not here. Within EPAF the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are pretty much the same for all nations. The only major differences lie in the safety margins used by the different air forces.
When I spoke to Alex in the second week, he proclaimed,
“After five days of operations, things are really running smoothly!” So as not make things any more complicated than they needed to be, the flying entities stayed national – except for a few exchange officers, all the aircraft and pilots in a four-ship formation would be from one country.
The role of mission commander rotated between the nations every day. After the orders came in, there was a multinational brainstorm after which the national element leaders went away to do their planning. Every hour, all the leaders came together for updates.
In the first week, the wing flew day sorties and Combined Air Operations (COMAOs). In the second week the wing also flew COMAOs during night missions. And it was busy, with 26 jets flying two sorties a day. The ongoing process of planning and flying kept both pilots and ground crews occupied.
The maintenance side of the operation was under the command of Norwegian Captain Tommy Myrvoll. All 270 maintenance personnel were pooled and worked from the specialty shops on the base. Each country brought only their own “fly-away kit” for the aircraft. Everything was shared. When an aircraft needed servicing, Myrvoll only needed to look at the speciality of the personnel, not which country they were from. That way a Dutch aircraft could be repaired by a Portugese and Norwegian maintenance crew, for instance. Signing off on the maintenance still had to be done by a member of the crew from the aircraft’s own country.
At Bodø the Norwegians put the MOC (Maintenance Operations Centre) in deployable containers. Here the international crew gained experience in working in less than perfect conditions. Serviceability levels were around ninety percent for the exercise.
All in all, ground and flight crews had the opportunity to work with international colleagues, much like they would (and are already doing) on operations around the world. The pilots got to train in a reasonable hostile environment due to the weather conditions. The pilots also had the opportunity to work with special forces, which also made up a large part of Cold Response 2007. The presence of a large live-fire range added to the realism of this exercise.
http://www.fencecheck.com/news/Cold_Response_2007/
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Now imagine one nation showing up with Gripens.
(IIRC EEAW is capable of deploying 32 F-16 on 5-7 days notice and a further 24-32 in another 3-4 weeks.)
