The Hungarian soldiers serving with the HDF Kabul International Airport Force Protection Contingent (HDF KAIA FPC) recently participated in a camp defence exercise.

The objective of regular drills is to make sure that all participants can learn the elements of precise reaction to events that may occur in the theatre of war while they are handling possible incidents like rocket attacks, suicide bombers at the gate, fires or suspicious packages in the area of the camp. These exercises provide them with an opportunity to strengthen cooperation among the elements of the KAIA Force Protection Group, the medical staff of the ROLE-3 hospital and the firefighters. In doing their everyday routine, these groups with different tasking work separately, but during incidents like these they need to join forces to be able to solve the problem together.

Due to the several contributors, the present exercise might as well be considered a “multinational” one, since besides the Hungarians, it involved French, Polish, Romanian, US, Portuguese and Afghan participants as well.

During the first task, explosives were hidden in a truck, and were found by a soldier on duty from the HDF Kabul International Airport Force Protection Contingent (HDF KAIA FPC), in cooperation with the EOD technicians. The site was immediately cordoned off and the removal of the explosives started after the notification and arrival of the relevant persons.

Concurrent with this, the training audience received information about a rocket attack on a building in the area of the camp, which resulted in multiple casualties. The immediate reaction forces cordoned off the area, and the firefighters arriving on the scene started to search the building, extinguish the fire and, in conjunction with the medical service, to evacuate and treat the wounded. The role-players were selected from the seventh rotation of the HDF National Support Element to help the exercise as “wounded personnel” and motor vehicle drivers.

“In planning the exercise, we constructed the scenario and designated the special fields to focus on in view of the current warnings. All in all, the exercise has been successful, and naturally, we are going to analyze and evaluate what went wrong, and will make changes wherever necessary. Needless to say, our soldiers can make excellent use of the lessons learned in this international environment at a later point too.”, Lt.-Col. László Deme told us. As operations chief at KAIA, the lieutenant-colonel plays an active role in planning and organizing exercises.

(HDF KAIA FPC-2 PAO)