Moonstar 2024

Among the main objectives of the exercise involving altogether 190 personnel are to ground platoon-level capabilities and to start generating them. Drawn from the HDF “vitéz Vattay Antal” 2nd Territorial Defence Regiment and the HDF “vitéz Reviczky László” 1st Territorial Defence Regiment, the designated soldiers of territorial defence regiments – who have been serving as reservists for years – learn how to provide area security and defence on the move, how to operate patrol bases, conduct offensive and defensive operations and operate various mobile checkpoints; besides, they are to conduct a live fire exercise. These joint international training programs extensively contribute to increasing the level of the reserve personnel’s military socialization as well.

Over the past few years, reservists have proven their skills and motivation on multiple occasions by accomplishing their assigned tasks during not only domestic but also on international exercises, such as Exercise Adaptive Hussars in 2023.

“In the first phase of Exercise Moonstar, we conducted a joint exercise with the Ohio National Guard, and now we are serving together with Polish and Slovak reserve forces. We’d like to expand cooperation in the future and to make sure that all territorial defence regiments have foreign partners. The tasks we perform are similar, so we can easily share the lessons learned” – said Brigadier General Dr. László Drót, Commander, HDF Territorial Defence Forces Command at the opening of the event in Hajmáskér.

Territorial defence reservists prove themselves in an increasing number of tasks in which they need to have largely the same skills as their active-duty comrades. This year’s exercise provides an excellent opportunity for the reservists to acquire skills that they could not learn elsewhere, and to return home with experiences and lessons for a lifetime.