Live Fire Exercise Halfway Through the Mission
Szöveg: MAT-3 | 2014. szeptember 6. 6:00The third rotation of the HDF Military Advisory Team (MAT) is now halfway through its mission. On August 26, the contingent was augmented with the personnel of the HDF National Support Element–Afghanistan (HDF NSE–A) giving armed service in Camp Marmal, and carried out its fourth monthly live fire exercise (LFX).
Similarly to the previous range days, the Hungarian soldiers arriving on the already familiar range re-experienced an almost “refreshing" heat of +40 degrees Celsius. In line with the weather conditions that had been forecasted for the given week, the LFX was often interrupted by dust devils of 10 to 15 meters in diameter.
Unlike previous live fire exercises, the specialty of the present LFX consisted in practicing and then assessing the cooperative skills of combat vehicle crews. What does that mean?
The mentors of the HDF MAT do their daily work at the headquarters of the Afghan Border Police (ABP) and the Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP). They access these HQs with MaxxPro and M-ATV armored combat vehicles provided by the US partners. The vehicle column prepares mainly for ambushes that it may run into while it is on the move, so the present LFX focused on destroying targets with the use of the turret-mounted 7.62mm PKM and the 12.7mm M2 machine guns.
The personnel had no time to relax after the two-plus-hours complex task execution, because they continued the training with live fire exercises using pistols, assault rifles, machine guns and 40mm RPGs.
The servicewomen of the National Support Element executed another special task – an advanced-level pistol target practice – in order to train for the 21-hour “Search Girl" duty (person and package search) to be performed in Camp Marmal. Like for other nations co-located in the camp, by a monthly roster, it is compulsory for the servicewomen of the Hungarian contingent to perform Force Protection (FP) duties at the gate of the camp, where they carry out point of entry (POE) procedures involving the search of female employees entering the camp. The pistol target practice is designed to prepare them for this armed FP service.
“The primary objective of the complex live fire exercises is to have the personnel drilled in realistic task execution so the soldiers can reduce the “surprise factor" to the minimum and be able to effectively use the drills in real situations if needed", Col. István Juhász, the commander of the contingent told us.
