Northern Challenge Exercise 2024

From 24 SEPT to 10 OCT 2024, the Icelandic Coast Guard hosted the multinational Bomb Disposal Exercise "The Northern Challenge (NC Ex)". The NC Ex aimed to train response to real-life terrorist incidents involving IEDs and other EOD-related scenarios, similar to those that have occurred in recent NATO missions and to be expected in the future.

Through the last 10 years, the NC Ex has become a well-known collective training event dedicated to the EOD community, which provides a platform to train national EOD capabilities within a multinational environment. This year, 18 land and 10 maritime EOD teams represented NC Ex's target audience. During the exercise, seventeen countries had a unique opportunity to practice various EOD Tactics, Techniques and Procedures and exchange experience about risk and threat assessment from multiple worldwide conflict zones.

As a result of the NC Ex planning phase, the NATO EOD COE accepted and carried out the execution phase by contributing to the Multinational EOD Coordination Cell (MNEODCC). Namely, 1LT Erik KOSAR, EOD staff officer conducted the MNEOD CC Battle Captain function, which involved planning, reporting, and monitoring of the EOD activities in a sudden area of responsibility.

Text, Photo: 1LT Erik KOSAR (SVK-A)