Live Fire Exercise for Warship Crews on the Zero Point Range

The joint Hungarian–Serb anti-aircraft live fire exercise Iron Cat 2012 started on September 5. On that day, 22 Serb soldiers arrived at the military port of Újpest. They were given classroom instruction and hands-on training, first at the military port and subsequently on the zero point range.

Brig.-Gen. János Huszár, the Land Force Chief of the HDF Joint Force Command and Maj.-Gen. Milan Mojsilovic, the commanding general of the Serb land forces inspected the exercise, which was conducted in a stormy weather.

After the excellent task execution, Brig.-Gen. János Huszár praised the cooperation between the subunits, saying that although these exercises are relatively low-budget ones, they are useful because they serve the aim of building confidence and cooperative skills between the soldiers of the two countries and through that, between the two nations. The brigadier-general referred to the exercise conducted on the Titel water range last year, where the warship crews of both nations had learnt useful lessons from each other.

Maj.-Gen. Milan Mojsilovic also expressed his satisfaction. In his opinion, the Hungarian–Serb cooperation is an excellent basis on which they can safely build in the future. Although the personnel of the two armies speak different languages, during the tasks of cooperation they speak one language. The major-general finally thanked the Hungarian partners for having created the conditions for the conduct of the exercise.

The first Iron Cat exercise took place in September 2011 at the edge of the Serbian town of Titel, on a water range established on River Tisza. This was the first time that the Hungarian warship crews had opportunity to fire live ammunition from the water, because in Hungary they are allowed to conduct only ground-based live fire exercises. On this year’s exercise, the Serb soldiers were shooting on the ground for the first time.

Photos: Gábor Galovtsik