Just beyond Ukraine's battlefields, NATO's elite forces prepare for what could come next
CBC
In pitch blackness, the lights of the twin engine C-146A Wolfhound aircraft lit up a tiny strip of asphalt, and out of the darkness, the special forces plane touched down with a noisy, dramatic landing.
With a landing zone only six metres wide, for the pilots at the controls, there was no room for error.
A special forces team on the ground had blocked a two-lane highway in rural Latvia, about two hours from the capital Riga, and converted it into an improvised runway to airlift a simulated wounded soldier. British, American, and Latvian soldiers were all part of the drill aimed at improving battlefield medical procedures to treat casualties.
WATCH | NATO special forces carry out training drills in eastern Europe:
In this scenario, the assumption was that shelling and the absence of air superiority made immediate evacuation by helicopter impossible, so the "patient" had to be cared for in the field and driven several hours to the safest spot for an aircraft to land.
The exercise was one of three executed by NATO special forces teams that CBC News was invited to observe this past week. In addition to the air evacuation scenario in Latvia, CBC News also went onboard a Romanian ship in the Black Sea to witness special forces boarding a vessel from the water and rappelling onto the ship from a helicopter.
In Lithuania, another exercise involved the storming of a building that had been seized by hostile forces.
The drills were held as part of Trojan Footprint, a 30-nation exercise involving more than 3,300 special and conventional forces, which ended this weekend.
It was designed to test what NATO calls "interoperability" between the various national special forces teams.
The drills come as the military alliance faces one of the greatest challenges of its 73-year existence in how to respond to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday, Finland said it will formally apply to join NATO and Sweden is expected to follow next week.
Canadian Special Forces were not participating in the Trojan Footprint exercises, but the task force commander of the Romanian special forces teams said all NATO countries effectively act as a single team.
"It's not about the war that's going on, [in Ukraine] it's about being prepared all the time … this is why we train and why we focus on having a high level of interoperability," said the commander, who can't be identified.
While the exercises were planned before Russia's Feb. 24th invasion of Ukraine, they've taken on greater urgency and visibility.
"At the moment, there are a lot of exercises and NATO is really pushing how they are enhancing their presence within the East, and also their capabilities as a maximum deterrent effect for Russia," said Ed Arnold, a research fellow in European security at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
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