Tenth Rotation Is Ready to Leave

Lt.-Col. Tamás Papp, the commander of the contingent is the Commanding Officer of the 2nd SAM battalion of the HDF 12th Arrabona Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) Regiment of Győr. He told us that the pre-deployment training program consisted of three phases. Between November 22–24, this program ended with a culmination exercise (CULEX) held in the barracks of the Győr unit, which was assessed as ‘satisfactory’ by the umpires and the superiors, the lieutenant-colonel told us. Lasting from January to July, this tour of duty abroad is going to be a special one for the units of Győr and Szentes because this will be the first time for them to participate in a mission with complex subunits. At the same time, one-tenth of the soldiers coming from the Arrabona regiment and nearly half of those from the Szentes unit have already served on missions abroad on one or more occasions. There are servicepersons from other units as well, who are going to fill some special positions of the contingent command during the next six months in Sarajevo.

“Based on the operational requirements, in line with the goals of crisis management and peace support, we need to be ready to execute crowd and riot control (CRC) tasks, to secure and control areas and routes, and accordingly to mount patrols, cordon off areas and operate checkpoints. Our root purpose includes transport, convoy and VIP escort duties as well", the contingent commander said. The present one will be his first tour of duty abroad.

Last September the commander and the key leaders of the contingent had opportunity to travel to the base of the Hungarian EUFOR contingent in Camp Butmir for a few days. This camp is located next to the Sarajevo international airport. After their arrival, the personnel of the 10th rotation will first go on a so-called evaluation exercise to demonstrate to the HQ of the Multinational Battalion their readiness to carry out their duties, which they will take over from the current troop rotation until January 31.