DT News | On the ground with Exercise TRILLIUM VENTURE
Video / June 12, 2024
Transcript
This exercise provides a lot of peace of mind for our constituents that will be in their beds on a nice pillow knowing that, you know, we have friends to help out in the case of another flood or any other disaster.
TRILLIUM VENTURE is all about our readiness - both individual and collective. I think we've seen over the past number of years that the CAF has deployed several times to help local authorities deal with, you know, fires, floods, you know, support to long term care and others. And this exercise is designed to get our soldiers out on the ground practicing those vital skills.
What we will be doing is we will be teaching the various other units here how to operate, whether it's assault boats or heavy equipment or chainsaws to simulate if there were an emergency, the types of things that we might be doing. So, for example, if the bridge were out and we need to get people across, one of the ways we could do that is with our assault boats and captive ferries. Going out and doing this for real amongst the Canadian population does a couple of things. One, it allows us to test our command and control, test our sustainability and logistics footprints, and as well, it just gives a chance for our soldiers to interact with Canadians in a way that they would be doing every day during a domestic operation. And so getting out there with the population, working with local, municipal, provincial leadership, other governmental organizations, you know, first responders at all levels, this is kind of critical to ensure that we have that synchronization ready to go in case we are called. It provides a unique perspective taking into consideration all the civilian aspects of traffic, people walking around. That is something that we don't get to experience on a typical exercise on a Canadian Armed Forces base. And it really just creates a realism to the training that we're experiencing this weekend.
In terms of capabilities, you know, we are going to test a new command and control digital system to be able to monitor in real time the movements of our troops and what they’re doing as a comms tool which includes everything up to a consolidated air picture. You know, a lot of times with the Army Reserves, this is where we're utilized. There's obviously a lot of moving parts, so, being able to do some dry runs, see where our deficiencies are, where our strengths are, you know, if we can do this now when we're not in an emergency scenario, it just makes us more efficient when we do have to deploy and time is of the essence.
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