“That Others May Live…”

Personnel recovery (PR) is not a new concept. Legendary stories about brilliantly executed recovery missions for downed and captured pilots and aircrews are known already from the time of the Vietnam War. The European Personnel Recovery Centre is dedicated to upholding this tradition and extending it to civilians in distress.

In spite of its name, the organization was not established by the European Union, as its members include the United States too, besides several European countries. The essence of its function is best expressed by its motto “That others may live". EPRC Area Director Lt.-Col. Uwe Schleimer (Germany) – who had been an operator flying F–4 Phantom fighter planes – told us that “the aim is to make sure that the armed forces of all member countries have the same capability of saving lives, possibly cooperating with each other during PR operations. To this end, the EPRC courses co-deploy the land and air forces made available by the participating nations so that they can get used to working together.

In this spirit, on the Distinguished Visitors Day of the exercise involving close to 400 troops from 13 nations, a training deployment took place that imitated fully real-world circumstances. In the fictitious scenario, the designated units had to recover aircrew members who had become isolated on enemy territory. While two Belgian Agusta-109 helicopters were securing the landing zone, two Spanish Eurocopter SuperPuma helicopters arrived in the region. After their landing, while providing mutual cover, Spanish and French Special Forces started searching the zone to find the injured pilot. Despite the heavy – of course, imitated – firefight, the ground forces successfully evacuated the isolated airman and left the area by helicopters. The final phase of the exercise demonstrated hot refueling (HOTREF), when the helicopters are refueled with running engines. This phase was executed at a forward refueling point located near the enemy forces.

Brig.-Gen. Albert Sáfár, Air Force Chief, HDF Joint Force Command assessed what he had seen by saying that “although seen from the outside, the activity in the briefing room seemed feverish, hurried and impossible to follow, at the very moment when the mission started, everything fell into place". The general added that although Hungary is not a member of the centre, the participation of Hungarian soldiers is very important. “To us, it is a great honor that this course, with all its equipment, has been brought to Hungary. We are not a member of the organization, but our soldiers were taking part in the activities as observers and organizers. The directing staff of the exercise spoke highly of our soldiers’ participation and of their problem-solving skills."

Answering our question, Brig.-Gen. Sáfár told us that he thinks it possible that in the future, Hungary and the Hungarian Defence Forces will join the nations that have already been training together. As he said, the demonstration showed that cooperation among several nations is no easy task, so it is necessary to learn lessons together in order to be able to successfully handle real situations.

Photo: Veronika Dévényi