Mentors Receive Spartan Sword

Gen. Sáfár also thanked the Hungarian airmen for their professionalism, discipline and the excellent job they have done. “You have completed a mission which makes all of us rightly proud". You have got through five busy months, your tour of duty has been spent with hard but efficient work, in a good mood. During the time of the mission, the entire personnel of the AAT–7 executed their mentoring tasks with great discipline and dedication. Once again, they have managed to build very close professional and friendly relationship with their American, Italian and Afghan colleagues, which went a long way towards ensuring the success of the mission. A proof of this was the fact that the Afghan students preferred flying with Hungarian mentors to flying with mentors of other nations, and also the fact that the Ukrainian technicians maintaining the helicopters always relied on the Hungarian aircraft maintainers’ expertise whenever they faced a new problem. The personnel of the AAT–7 managed to perform their duties professionally, to the best of their knowledge in the area of operations", the Air Force Chief stressed in his speech.

This has been the first mission for Maj. Zsolt Simon, the commander of the contingent. He told us that their core duty was to train the Afghan helicopter pilots. In contrast with earlier rotations, this time the maintenance specialists did not receive any trainees. For this reason, they only carried out mentoring tasks over the last few months, providing assistance to Afghan ground crews in helicopter maintenance, while the aircrews of the AAT were instructing co-pilots, flight engineers and door gunners. These Afghan students have never flown a Mi–17 before, so they had to start their training from the basics. At the end of the program, however, they were ready to execute tasks even while flying in formation.

Gen. Sáfár said special thanks to the best ones for their work. Acting on behalf of the Chief Defence, he decorated Maj. Zsolt Simon with the “For Distinguished Service" memorial medal in recognition of his outstanding professionalism during the international peace mission. On behalf of the commander of the HDF Joint Force Command, he awarded tokens of appreciation to Capt. Péter Stumpf and Senior Master Sergeant Norbert Gyémánt.

Besides the returning airmen’s family members, friends and colleagues, the homecoming ceremony was also attended by Brig.-Gen. Imre Lamos, commander, HDF 86th Szolnok Helicopter Base, György Balla, the deputy mayor of Szolnok and Zsolt Borbás, the vice-president of the Jász–Nagykun–Szolnok County General Assembly.

The HDF Mi–17 Air Advisory Team (AAT) is in charge of training and mentoring transport helicopter pilots of the Afghan land forces. The AAT is stationed at Shindand Air Base, Herat Province, Western Afghanistan. The Mi–17 Air Advisory Team is the latest mission of the Hungarian Defence Forces, whose first contingent deployed to Afghanistan in late August 2011. Hungarian, American and Italian airmen serve together in the Mi–17 transport helicopter section of the group. Their task is to train and mentor the novice, advanced and instructor helicopter pilots in order to make sure that by using its own resources, the independent Afghan National Army (ANA) is ready to preserve and strengthen stability and peace in the country.

Photos by the author