Around 700 Foreign and Hungarian Soldiers Proved Themselves in Military Exercise Black Swan

At the open day of Exercise Black Swan 2019 scheduled between 2nd and 21st June the SOF soldiers demonstrated a lot of extremely spectacular manoeuvres. The deployed military technology speaks for itself: MC-130 aircraft, Cougar helicopter, and CV-22 (Osprey) VTOL-capable tiltrotor airplane were all involved. Gripen fighter planes, and Mi-24 and Mi-17 helicopters were also deployed. The Hungarian, American, Slovenian, Macedonian, Croatian, and Slovakian special operations soldiers demonstrated how to properly seize a military airfield, said Brigadier Tamás Sándor.

“The demonstration went smoothly and it is very important that it was executed without any preliminary exercising as the soldiers were instructed only with the use of a sand table. It is important to note that the exercise had started two and a half weeks ago – with staff work and elaboration of tasks, then the deployment of individual groups – and will last for another two weeks therefore what could be seen here was just a tiny part of the big picture", the Commander said. The exercise is being conducted not only in Hungary as the Croatian participants operate in the region of Split, contributing to the execution of the exercise with their naval capabilities.

The Brigadier General also mentioned that as part of the Zrínyi 2026 Defence and Armed Forces Development Program the establishment of the regional special operations command began. Certain elements of the Command saw action for the first time. Parallel to that the US deployed a headquarters of special operations for the coordination of the training. The regional command is expected to reach its full operational capability by 2025.

Major General Kirk Smith, Commander of US Special Operations Command Europe, told our reporter that the cooperation among the soldiers of different nations was excellent and the control provided by the Hungarian forces worked well. The exercise provided the special operations soldiers of the participating nations with excellent opportunity to learn each other’s procedures, strengths and limitations, and in particular: how they can support each other in the most efficient way on the battlefield. “The cooperation among Hungarian and American soldiers is very good, and each time when we work together we learn something from each other which is key to development after all", the Major General said.