Scrap Until The Closing Exercise!

First the ten people who play the wicked resistance in the simulated situation throw bottles of mineral water at the riot control team, then they pitch into the human obstacle, and try to fetch the shields and batons. But the personnel lined up behind the shields do not hesitate to react either, a few batons swing forward from behind the phalanx and lightly stroke various bodyparts of the ’enraged demonstrators’.

This is the first thing that catches the eye of those who visit the Tata corps nowadays, where the 6th rotation of the EUFOR contingent fulfil their current training task. At platoon level, they have already mastered the basic practical skills related to exigency measures, namely the creation, start, alignment, stopping, and dissolution of the formation. In the two weeks before the closing exercise they put emphasis on forging the platoons together, and on the company-level management of a crowd pursuing an illegal activity.

The collective operation requires considerable practice and preparedness, expertise from both the commanding officer and the subordinate troops, therefore it is no wonder that the use of collective force in crowd dispersal is the backbone of preparation. In the next period they will practice in detail and later in progress how to negotiate with a crowd, pick out the dominant speakers, disperse a crowd actively, and bring down barricades. Crowd management requires teamwork, and the commander, as well as the subordinate personnel must know that. The purpose of the exercise is not only to prepare the troops for lifelike situations by learning the methods, but also to learn about mass psychology in order to be able to give a prepared, calm response in every case.