Ex MAPLE RESOLVE puts training to the test

June 1, 2019 - Tim Bryant, Western Sentinel

The Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF’s) largest training exercise – Exercise MAPLE RESOLVE (ExMR) – took place last month, marking the end of the Road to High Readiness.

Taking over the training area at 3^rd Canadian Division Support Base Edmonton Detachment Wainwright from May 8 to 24, 2019, the exercise brought together more than 5,000 personnel from across 3^rd Canadian Division to determine the division’s readiness to be deployed on exercise around the world.

ExMR serves many purposes for the CAF, but the primary objective is to prepare soldiers to operate in an ever-changing military world. To that end, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Pospolita, Deputy Commander Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre (CMTC)—the entity that runs ExMR and other training exercises across Canada—explained he and his team try to give soldiers “the most realistic and most challenging training possible.”

The training can be so tough and so demanding that soldiers have often doubted actual combat situation can be as difficult and challenging as what CMTC provided in training.

“There’s no way that’s going to happen,” LCol Pospolita recounted soldiers having told him.

When they return from their deployments, their minds have been changed.

“However, they go into theatre and come back and say, ‘Thank you for preparing me for that day; we didn’t realize it was going to happen,’” LCol Pospolita said.

The shift to a more complex and challenging training experience is a relatively recent one, brought about by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, explained Brigadier-General Trevor Cadieu, Commander 3^rd Canadian Division.

“It fundamentally changed the way we had to look at how we trained our troops,” he said.

Prior to Sept. 11, the CAF trained in a “risk averse” manner, without a professional opposing force to force soldiers to think and react to changing situations.

This year, the primary training audience, 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (1 CMBG), is faced with “a living, breathing, thinking, well-equipped enemy,” BGen Cadieu explained.

Soldiers are placed in as realistic an environment as possible. They’re out in the Wainwright training area for two weeks, in austere conditions, to simulate being on deployment. They will need to eat, sleep and remain alert in the field.

Because the leaders, or any other soldiers, will not be able to stay awake and alert for the whole exercise, they’ll need to plan out their sleep and activity cycles in greater detail.

“They are going straight for the next two weeks,” BGen Cadieu said. “They can't fake their way through that.”

It’s a stark departure from the 1990s when BGen Cadieu joined the military.

“Today we are deliberately taking them to the point of failure,” he said.

Working in the Wainwright training area is not easy, explained LCol Pospolita. It features changing terrain with deceiving undulating hills, a river runs through it, and there is a major hill feature to contend with. Troops can easily get lost or stuck in the training area, especially when they’re on day five or six with minimal sleep.

Add in an opposing force and insurgents hidden amongst the locals in the exercise scenario, and it’s an environment that aims to test every bit of a soldier’s training.

ExMR aims to be as realistic as possible, and that includes incorporating a social media component accessible to both 1 CMBG and the enemy forces.

“Knowing the way things are, you cannot ignore social media,” explained LCol Pospolita. “We have a closed social media network, which we bring in for ExMR. In each of the various towns [in the training area], there are capabilities to have internet cafes, we have our own ‘Fakebook’ where people can go.”

The ‘Fakebook’ allows the enemy forces to keep tabs on what 1 CMBG is doing, while 1 CMBG can use it to find out what is happening around the area. But since it’s a social media network and anyone can use it, it’s also a tool to spread information and misinformation from and about both sides.

In other words, it can be used as part of an ‘information operations’ campaign, explained LCol Ross Bonnell, Chief of Staff at CMTC.

LCol Pospolita explained the influx of allies is a result of how successful ExMR has been over the years.

“As everyone starts seeing the success of it, other nations want to participate,” he said. “And much the same way, we send personnel to their exercises as well, because there's always something we can learn on how to do something better.”

LCol Bonnell added that having allied members in attendance and participating in ExMR in various capacities, from acting as enemy forces to observing and helping run the exercise, benefits the relationships Canada has with its partners and increases interoperability.

“It's a good problem for the brigade to navigate, because we know that wherever the Army or 1 CMBG deploys, it's going to be in a multinational context,” he said.

A training exercise is the best time to come to a mutual understanding when it comes to language and terminology differences, LCol Bonnell added.

At the end of ExMR, when 1 CMBG has been validated as ready for deployment, LCol Bonnell said there’s one outcome and piece of feedback he was especially looking for.

“What we want to hear from soldiers is that it was a real challenge,” he said.