Photo By Troy Darr | Two Soldiers from the 379th Chemical Company headquartered in Chicago, Ill., respond...... read more read more
BAKONYKUTI, Hungary – Exercises Clean Care and Vigorous Warrior 2024 combined chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense with military medical care this year to train 1,600 soldiers from 35 NATO ally and partner nations April 28 to May 9 at the combat training center here between Lake Balaton and the Transdanubian Mountains.
Dozens of medical and CBRN units deployed from across Europe and North America to participate using a complex training scenario with hundreds of simulated casualties every day to represent a potential NATO Article 5 operation.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is NATO’s central precept that an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all allies.
“Clean Care and Vigorous Warrior provide a great opportunity for medical and chemical soldiers to basically practice medical treatment for chemical casualties from the point of exposure to a Role 2 clinic, and for this exercise we have 35 NATO and partner nations that are involved in it,” said U.S. Army Col. Michael Firmin, director of Education. Training and Evaluation Department at the NATO Joint Chemical, Biological and Radiological Defence Center of Excellence headquartered in Vyskov, Czechia. “The ability of these medical and CBRN defense experts to come together and as a team respond to potential chemical casualties shows NATO's resilience and our ability to respond to aggression from our adversaries.”
Participating medical units practiced the process of medical support from triage to surgical intervention in a realistic environment while the CBRN defense forces trained on recovering and decontaminating casualties.
“Exercise Clean Care has been a great opportunity for our team especially in terms of honing our craft and learning new skills that can help us better perform our mission when we return home,” said Sgt. Kevin Childs, 147th Brigade Support Battalion headquartered in Fort Collins, Colo. “The best part of the exercise though was working with Soldiers from other countries and having the opportunity to integrate with their units.”
According to Lt. Col. Mark Williams, U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General and exercise director for Clean Care 2024, the Clean Care series of exercises is important to the NATO alliance because it “is a NATO interoperability exercise that allows allied and partner nations to practice with both CBRN defense and medical capabilities in any CBRN environment across the land, air and maritime domains.”
For 1st Lt. Mike Sofka, 379th Chemical Company headquartered in Chicago, Ill., Exercise Clean Care was his first opportunity to participate in a joint, NATO exercise.
“We got the call that a bunker filled with depleted uranium rounds or spent fuel rounds got hit with an IDF (indirect fire), so from there our task was to find the sources of or the zones of radiation and make a perimeter around the radiation to keep people outside of the (simulated) lethal area of radiation,” said Sofka. “We learned a lot, today.
“This was one of the first kinds of this type of mission that we've done, so it was kind of a learning process for everyone.
“We think we did well for the first time, and I'm really proud of the Soldiers. It was a very, very long mission but we accomplished it.
“I think Exercise Clean Care is a very unique experience. “We're learning a lot with the very diverse type of mission sets that we're not quite used to, but we're improvising, adapting and overcoming.
The main objective of the exercise according to a Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe press release was for the different countries to learn each other's practices, to clarify professional language differences and to prepare for the challenges of the modern battlefield.
“Exercise Clean Care was an amazing opportunity to meet our counterparts from other countries and build new relations,” Sgt. 1st Class Francinette Holokahi, 147th Brigade Support Battalion. “I have an amazing team here that was able to come together, meet new challenges and learn some new skills from our counterparts.
“This is just an awesome, awe-inspiring challenge that we got to experience, and we got to see a whole new country and experience some of the cultures of our NATO counterparts.”
According to U.S. Army Col. Ken Spicer, interim commander of the recently activated 68th Theater Medical Command, headquartered in Sembach, Germany, his unit will play a leading role in Exercise Vigorous Warrior starting in 2026.
“We came out here to Vigorous Warrior 24 and Clean Care 24 really focused on preventive medicine operational assets, force health protection operational assets such as laboratory capabilities and a radiological advisory management team capability because in a large scale combat operation many, many casualties will result from a lack of disease and non-injury prevention,” said Spicer. “These multinational capabilities truly serve to prevent DNBI (disease and non-battle) injuries and keep soldiers fit to fight.”
On the final day of the exercise Deputy Minister Tamas Vargha, parliamentary state secretary of the Hungarian Ministry of Defense said, “Wars cannot be won with weapons alone.”
“It is also just as important to heal wounds and to save lives,” said Vargha.
| Date Taken: | 05.17.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 05.17.2024 07:16 |
| Story ID: | 471520 |
| Location: | BAKONYKUTI, HU |
| Web Views: | 177 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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