At Halfway Point

During the first week of the exercise, the Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian troops were basically conducting live fire exercises and participated in various cohesion-building training sessions. The events were going on in almost all parts of the training area, the combat vehicles were rattling in the field and the weapons were thundering. On 3 November the Italian soldiers achieved spectacular results while firing the SPIKE anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). In another corner of the “zero point" range the Italian Centauro combat vehicles carried out a live fire exercise.

The afternoon was highly significant for the Hungarian company, as after the rearrangement of the targets on the range, its members conducted a company-level complex live fire tactical training event. Besides being an active element of the MLF, the Hungarian company – which is drawn from the HDF 5th Bocskai István Infantry Brigade – will enter a high-level standby period starting from 1 January 2018 as a unit declared to the NATO Response Force (NRF).

In addition to the tasks of the multinational Exercise Clever Ferret 2017, the personnel have to train for next year’s NRF standby duties, and that is why the company carried out a live fire tactical training event. The Italian soldiers and the foreign observers attending the exercise also observed the execution of this task.

Having reached halfway point, Clever Ferret 2017 continues with focus on building
interoperability and cohesion among the national elements as well as on practicing and synchronizing battle drills during combined training events in the second half of the exercise. The objective is to enable the MLF to plan and conduct crisis response operations and joint tactical action by the end of the training.

Photo: Péter Snoj