New Brunswick military base hosts Exercise 'Ardent Defender'

The 5th Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown is the second largest military base in Canada, making it the perfect host site for a training exercise featuring 400 troops.

Military personal from Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States have stationed at the Oromocto, N.B., base for Exercise ARDENT DEFENDER.

From Thursday to Oct. 30, troops with expertise in explosive ordnance detection and disposals will learn and compete among one another in friendly competitions. Troops will further enhance their skills in countering and exploiting explosive type threats in a controlled setting.

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“I think any good military exercise or event, there's always a little bit of a level of competition,” says Brigadier General Heather Morrison of the Canadian Armed Forces. “I think this is a great way to showcase the skill sets from every different nation.”

“Battlefields change and adapt and we're seeing this daily now,” continues Morrison. “The importance of understanding how to counter explosive threats is only growing. So this is what I think Canada certainly is good at and can bring to the table.”

Canadian Armed Forces Brigadier General Heather Morrison is pictured. (CTV/Avery MacRae)

The completion aspect was on full display Friday in a bomb-relay type event which pitted teams from different nations against one another to see who could compete the task the fastest.

“It also builds a level of trust and teamwork that is absolutely essential in a military line of work,” says Morrison. “You have to be able to trust the person next to you and by honing those skills and getting better at it we build greater trust and camaraderie and morale.”

Teams would first send someone wearing a bomb suit into the forest where they would have to go over obstacles to find a letter in a box. They would then run back out (while avoiding the same obstacles) and trade the bomb suit with a teammate who would then search a vehicle for four more letters. They then will use that code word to unlock a box in a large field, before the troop wearing the bomb suit is “hurt” and has to be cared for by his teammates. All of this had to be done in under 15 minutes.

“I think we're doing rather well,” says Morrison on the Canadian teams. “Little home team advantage absolutely.”

Sergeant Brendon Hill says exercises like this with allied nations in critical to get to know one another better and be able to further understand each others tactics to make things more seamless in the field.

Troops tend to a comrade wounded by a “explosive device” during the training exercise. (CTV/Avery MacRae)

It also allows the Canadian Armed Forces to showcase one of its premier training grounds to other countries.

“From what I heard from other countries they don't have vast training areas like we do here,” says Hill. “It's quite a large base so everybody here has been impressed with the training facilities and the environment here.”

The 5th Canadian Division Support Base is a 1,000 square kilometre training area with 1,500 km of roads, 900km or tracks and 740 buildings.

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