Joint Drill of Army and Navy Special Forces

13-4-2012 | It was called Tridente I, it included tactical divers and special forces personnel from the Army's 601st Company, it lasted for a week of training in Mar del Plata and concluded with an amphibious exercise.

Mar del Plata - During the month of March, the joint exercise Tridente I was carried out, which included groups of tactical divers from the Argentine Navy and special forces from the 601st Commando Company of the Argentine Army.

The aforementioned training – which included theoretical-practical classes on combat health, shooting and nautical cartography, among others – took place at the facilities of the Mar del Plata Naval Base and concluded with an amphibious exercise in the waters of the South Atlantic.

Ending the exercise
The amphibious day of the Tridente I exercise began with the departure of the ARA submarine “Santa Cruz” from its natural base at the Mar del Plata Naval Base, followed by the ARA patrol boat “Punta Mogotes” and the support vessel ARA “Sobral”, both dependent on the Maritime Patrol Division.

The hypothesis that articulated the exercise proposed the formation of a joint peace force under the orders of the United Nations that had to act under Chapter 7 in order to recover a unit taken over by a hostile group from a country in crisis.

To do this, the joint special forces were divided into two groups: the first boarded the submarine with the mission of recovering the support vessel, where the second group was in a hostile role.

Already several miles out to sea, the exercise began, which included the assembly of two Zodiac boats on the back of the submarine, while “Punta Mogotes” remained immediate to provide support in case of contingency.

Then the boarding and recovery of the support vessel was carried out, which concluded with the reduction of the hostile group. At the end of the day, the special forces groups aboard the units returned to port.

“This was the closing of an intense training with our Army counterparts, with whom we have already worked on other occasions. We deployed as a single force, achieving all the proposed objectives,” said the Chief of Operations of the Tactical Divers Group, Lieutenant Raúl Closter.

For his part, and led by Major Gustavo Oliver, Sergeant Julián René Espinoza expressed that “this is the second time that I have participated in an exercise with tactical divers but the first time to sail in a submarine. A very different experience that included assembling a boat on that type of unit. And although the boarding of the ship had not been done before either, the procedures and techniques are similar to others that we practice on land, only the spaces are more confined.”

“I had to be a shooter and my objective along with two others was to recover the ship's machines. In this task, everything is experienced as something real, because you do not know how the personnel designated as hostile are going to act, you have to take care of yourself in every opening or opening because you do not know how they are going to defend themselves," said Julián, while concluding that “The procedures with tactical divers are very similar, especially for those of us who did training with the Halcón group of the Federal Police.”

Marine Maneuvers
In the case of the “Sobral” crew, the amphibious exercise was an opportunity to continue their annual training. As explained by its commander, Lieutenant Commander Juan Ángel Días Ballve, “we were able to exercise ourselves in basic techniques, maneuvers with boats, anchoring, coastal navigation, communications, things that the warning must do while participating in any type of operation, whether military or not. "We were able to contribute as a simulated unit under hostile capture and the amphibian helped us train in a lot of maneuvers that we can only do if we go out to sea."

Notice the first operator from the left using a Steyr MPi 69, a submachine used by the Tactical Divers Unit of the Argentine Navy. The first photo of this report shows an operator using FN P90 in 5.56mm, the replacement of the Steyr MPi 69.

Finally, summarizing the performance of his personnel, he said that “they have performed very well, it is the beginning of the year and there are many things to adjust but it is part of the training. What always stands out is that when people go out to sea they show great good will and that is part of achieving success in training.”