Standardised urban warfare training is essential for future conflict

Joint urban SERE train­ing capa­bil­i­ties will have a huge impact on the way that forces oper­ate in future con­flicts espe­cial­ly with regards to coali­tion mis­sions like the one cur­rent­ly being played out in Libya.

Talk­ing to Defence IQ, ahead of the Joint Per­son­nel Recov­ery event in June, Major Bart Holewi­jn, Com­man­der at the Roy­al Nether­lands SERE School says that stan­dard joint capa­bil­i­ties as out­lined in the lat­est NATO doc­trine, released in Jan­u­ary, will ensure stan­dard­ised train­ing meth­ods that would not have been con­sid­ered six months ago.

“Train­ing is now stan­dard­ised which will very much help in PR mis­sions and future NATO oper­a­tions as peo­ple now know that these are the meth­ods that we need to adhere to. It makes pro­ce­dure eas­i­er to follow.”

Major Holewi­jn adds, “Com­bin­ing schools into a mul­ti-lat­er­al or bi-lat­er­al school sys­tem could make it much more effi­cient to train stu­dents and ulti­mate­ly save mon­ey, which is a con­se­quence of decreas­ing bud­gets. Work­ing togeth­er will be the biggest trend over the next 12 months.”

With defence bud­gets being cut, Major Holewi­jn states it makes sense for coun­tries to set up joint train­ing ven­tures such as the one between the Nether­lands and Bel­gian train­ing schools that he heads up. 

Major Holewi­jn will be lead­ing a ses­sion at the Joint Per­son­nel Recov­ery con­fer­ence on 28th June 2011, look­ing at SERE train­ing and PR pol­i­cy development: 

• Releas­ing the lat­est NATO PR pol­i­cy doc­trine to be used as the roadmap for future development
• Roy­al Nether­lands Air Force SERE school — devel­op­ing an inte­grat­ed Euro­pean SERE train­ing pol­i­cy — inves­ti­gat­ing coop­er­a­tion with the Bel­gian SERE School
• Analysing how coop­er­a­tive efforts between NATO allies can achieve effi­cient and effec­tive PR operations

Joint Per­son­nel Recov­ery will take place at Le Meri­di­en Pic­cadil­ly in Lon­don on 28th — 29th June 2011. The con­fer­ence pro­gramme is avail­able at www.jointpersonnelrecovery.com.

In addi­tion, the Joint Per­son­nel Recov­ery down­load cen­tre fea­tures com­pli­men­ta­ry pod­casts, arti­cles, press releas­es and reports, all avail­able to down­load in full.

The Defence IQ — Mil­i­tary Com­mu­ni­ty LinkedIn group is open for mem­ber­ship and dis­cus­sion, and updates are avail­able by fol­low­ing Defence IQ on Twit­ter.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Yun Shi | IQPC Inter­na­tion­al, 2nd Floor, 129 Wilton Road, Lon­don, SW1V 1JZ | Tel: +44 20 7368 9574