International Exercise Golden Serve 2025

The nominated personnel of the HDF 2nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Regiment participated in the above-mentioned international exercise organized by the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) 10th Panzer Division, Panzer Brigade 12, Reconnaissance Battalion 8. All reconnaissance units of the Austrian Armed Forces (Bundesheer) and the Bundeswehr were represented at the exercise, including long-range reconnaissance groups assigned to the German Special Operations Forces.

One characteristic of the Bavarian region is that instead of closed military training areas separated from civilian infrastructure, the Bundeswehr can use large areas (even thousands of square kilometers in a given case), thanks to which the personnel can rehearse realistic situations such as movement across built-up areas, the use of civilian infrastructure (with permission) and cooperation with the local populace. Among the positive benefits of the lack of local knowledge was the fact that, the soldiers of the regiment had to rely exclusively on the detailed analysis and interpretation of their maps in the interest of successful task execution.

The execution phases of the tasks were connected, often running in parallel. They were preceded by a period of individual preparation: the soldiers were issued the weapons, the technical materiel and the optical devices, and based on preliminary information, they put together and arranged the individual and tactical equipment.

While conducting the exercise based on a fictitious scenario, the troops pushed back the forces of an aggressor country from the areas occupied by them, with the Hungarian teams representing the opposing force.

In the period of collective training, the personnel practiced wet gap crossing on a section of River Danube near Bogen, and took part in first responder and Combat Life Saver (CLS) level test by imitating situations very close to real-world ones.

The Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle/Image Intelligence (SUAV/IMINT) team conducted practice flights under the supervision of the local UAV team, while the long-range reconnaissance groups infiltrated into the depth of enemy defences across very difficult terrain, 30 kilometers from the insertion point.

The barracks “Kaserne Am Goldenen Steig” housing the exercise and the surrounding huge area with civil infrastructure provided the army scouts with an excellent opportunity to practice those tasks in an international environment of multinational forces that they are continuously training for. Moreover, on the last day of the task execution, the Hungarian soldiers conducted live fire training on the Freyung shooting range to test some of the weapons in service with the Bundeswehr.