Israeli army training military exercises under fire for Forward Rescue Tank Unit 0401132

The Forward Rescue Unit is regularly made up of four separate squads and trains as a company once a year. This sets them apart from other reserve units, which are required by law to conduct unit wide trainings once every three years. The unit mainly deals with especially complex rescue operations that are difficult for standard rescue forces to perform.

"The unit knows how to extract every kind of vehicle, even in the field of battle in the most complicated situations, from the tank that’s had a charge activated against it to a tank that's broken down in the mud with soldiers inside," explained Maj. Itai Avisha, the drill commander. "The unit's capability is not at all trivial. Every brigade commander today wants representatives of the unit close, because in the battle field he depends on them, and they are the ones who prevent the situation from becoming a security weak point," he said.

In last week’s training the reservists worked on rescue operations which emphasized the operational element. Maj. Avisha said that "the drill is performed once a year, and the main concern is usually the professional element. This time we emphasized especially the operational aspect, including weapons training and team drills." He said that "ultimately the rescue workers operate in the field like tank soldiers in every way, thus they need to know how to perform moving fire drills, both on foot and in vehicles, as part of their rescue and navigation work.”

The unit's recue company commander Chief Warrant Officer (res.) Richard Avizeret explained that the most complex rescue missions are those in which vehicles are caught under fire. “When we are rescuing in normal conditions not under fire, we can arrive at the field, exit the transport vehicle, and learn and see what needs to be done and how to perform the extraction, when all the options are open in front of us. But when we are under tense fire, there is a minimum of things we take with us, and we must work quickly with the means available,” explained CWO (res.) Avizeret.

The company commander noted that the squads are very exposed to harm, and deal with many physical and mental difficulties. He also explained that in Operation Defensive Shield the unit had to deal with circumstances where its soldiers were exposed to fire while extracting soldiers from tanks caught in the field of combat.“Gradually we learned how to manage such situations, and we learned the necessary lessons in order to develop the techniques that provided protection to the rescuers,” CWO (res.) Avizeret said. At every opportunity the unit practices creating a barrier between themselves and the area of the enemy, and perform every training exercise with an emphasis on protecting the rescuers.