Breaching Success

Line of Effort 1 Engineer Det WO

In early June 2017, as a part of Op UNIFIER Roto 3, CAF Combat Engineers from 1 CER conducted breaching training with the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) in Starychi, Ukraine. Over a two day period, Canadian Task Force (TF) Members worked with the 1-79th Air Assault Brigade delivering training on mechanical breaching using sledge hammers, rams, and window breaking.

Upon completion of the mechanical breaching training, the UAF soldiers moved to explosive breaching ranges where they conducted training on charge construction. Charges consisted of TNT and Det Cord to breach a variety of targets, including metal doors, wooden doors, and wooden walls. The UAF soldiers also practiced room clearing drills upon a successful breach of the door to maximize training value. Further, the Ukrainians also conducted explosive obstacle breaching during a live range. They blew various types of obstacles such as wire obstacles, hedgehogs, knife rests, and log hurdles.

In all this training is assisting UAF soldiers to improve their overall drills and techniques with regard to urban and conventional obstacle breaching. In addition to training UAF soldiers, 1 CER engineers are also training UAF IPSC instructors. The practice of planning and running NATO standard engineers ranges is one of many things Canadian engineers are instructing them on. Doing so will enable UAF Engineer instructors to deliver this training independently in the near future.