Major EDA helicopter exercise Hot Blade 2012 is almost under way. Throughout the past couple of days, troops and helicopters have been arriving at Ovar Air Base in Portugal. Finnish NH90s and German CH53 Sea Stallions arrived in Portugal by sea - in an important test of the tricky logistical challenge of transporting helicopters by sea, and were reassembled at the ports, before flying on to Ovar.
Meanwhile, EDA's Project Manager, Wing Commander Andy Gray, also arrived in Ovar, where he has been helping coordinate the final preparations. Before he left, he gave an advance briefing to Brussels-based journalists on the exercise.
There, he noted with thanks the dedicated involvement of the contributing Member States, Portugal (the hosts), and Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Finland - as well as observers from Sweden and the UK. He thanked Portugal for their contribution in hosting the exercise, and also Luxembourg for their important financial support.
Wing Cdr Gray stressed the scale of the exercise and its complexity. In that vein, he provided illustrations of the scope of the exercise area, which covers almost half of Portugal, and listed the many skills that will be practiced in the exercise, including Air Assault, Special Operations Aviation, Combat Service Support, Close Air Support including Urban CAS and Emergency CAS, Convoy/helicopter escorts, Reconnaissance and Security operations, Combat Search and Rescue, Personnel Recovery, Military/Non Military extractions, Medical Evacuation and Casualty Evacuation.
Wing Cdr Gray went on to place the exercise in the wider context of the Helicopter Training Programme. He offered a potted history of the programme, and explained that Hot Blade built on the lessons learned and past successes of previous exercises in France, Spain and Italy. He highlighted the creation of the Helicopter Tactics Course in the UK, the ‘train-the-trainers’ initiative, harmonization of flying training, the development of the NH90 and experimentation with distributed simulator training. In this context, he looked forward to Exercise Green Blade, to be held in Belgium in Autumn 2012, and to the creation of a core planning team to steer the programme in the long-term basis.
Exercise Hot Blade takes place from 4-19 July. For all the latest news on Hot Blade, go to the dedicated exercise website.
