bird's eye view by the hawk
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ritish soldiers of 6 Battalion, Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers
(REME), recently hosted a multi-national vehicle recovery exercise deep in war-torn Bosnia. Sponsored by Supreme I leadquarters Allied Powers Europe (SI IAPE), the objective of Exercise Able Engineer was to gain accurate data on the ability of Dayton Peace Implementation Force (IFOR) contributing nations to provide logistics assistance to their partners on peacekeeping duties.
For more than five years, there has been a great degree of multi-national military cooperation on peacekeeping duties in the former Yugoslavia, but to date each contributing nation has been entirely responsible for its own logistics support.
As a result, National Support Element (NSE) resupply convoys travelling inland through regions patrolled by troops of other nations have had to take their own recovery vehicles and crews with them. In addition, participation by some smaller nations has had to be vetoed because they have insufficient manpower or equipment to provide logistics back-up for themselves.
Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine and the United States all sent recovery teams and vehicles to join the British on exercise Able Engineer.
Over a period of four days each crew attempted three different recovery tasks—straight pull, front suspended tow and rear suspended tow—on each of 26 logistic and utility vehicles. Recovery vehicles ranged in size from a Greek Steyr truck with runway beam and chain hoist up to the latest German 1.iebherr 6x6 recovery crane. Vehicles to be rescued included everything from a tiny Belgian Iltis utility vehicle to an Iveco high. mobility fuel tanker with 18-tonne rear axle weight. To make the exercise as realistic as possible all recoveries were carried out along the edge of a disused runway with suspected minefields on both sides. The participants, mostly sergeants and corporals, were given free rein by the organisers to handle their recoveries in any way they felt was safe.
Each team prepared reports of problems encountered, lessons learned and additional equipment required to carry out their tasks.
Despite the inevitable language difficulties (for added realism interpreters did not take part) co-operation was superb. In future if, say, an Austrian supply truck breaks down in Malaysia's area of responsibility, its driver can be confident that his IFOR colleagues have the ability to recover him to the safety of the nearest patrol base.
At the end of four days of cross-training, simulated recoveries followed by a drive-past of multinational vehicle combinations were carried out in front of visiting dignitaries.