Chief Editor of Latvian Military Magazine “Tēvijas Sargs” Līga Lakuča’s interview with LCol Wade Rutland,
Commander of NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup in Latvia.
sargs.lv, 13 Sept 2017
— What are the tasks of your battlegroup? What are the priorities of this battlegroup?
— Deter any possible aggression and defend the region if necessary, in order to prevent conflict. The theory behind deterrence is that you have a capability, professional soldiers, and the will to use it, and what that’s intended to do is change the mindset of an adversary that would maybe do something harmful or inappropriate. So deterrence is the main mission. Now, how we do that on a day to day basis? This isn’t this kind of typical Afghanistan or Bosnia mission which we’ve done in the past. Latvia has a fully functioning security apparatus, government and economy. So what we’re mainly going to do on a day to day basis is train, and that’s for couple of reasons. Number one is that’s what soldiers do – it keeps their skills sharp. Also, we’re a multinational battlegroup that is being integrated into the Latvian Land Forces, and we need to train together. Each nation has their own progression of training, and so every individual group arrived in theatre at their nation’s highest level of army training. What we’re doing now is working together as a cohesive entity and as part of the Latvian Land Forces. The next thing we’re going do is outreach - to show who and what we are to the population, just like we would do in our home nations. When there is a school or event we’ll send some soldiers and equipment, and give a briefing of who we are and what we do. By doing that, conducting our training which is always open, transparent – and showing what we do... we will accomplish our mission. And accomplishing our mission means that we go home, and really everything stays peaceful and we go home satisfied with what we accomplished here.
— For you it’s maybe most difficult, because for second team it will be maybe easier, because they know the situation... What was your, like, expectations, what will be here, because, like you said, it’s Latvia, it’s not Afghanistan, it’s completely different story, different life... and... and different mission? What was your personal feelings for coming here?
— Yes, so before the Warsaw Summit when we started to get the news that the Canadian led eFP battlegroup would be paired with Latvia, I could certainly pick it out on the map as one of the Baltic States, but other than most of what I knew came from having watched Canada play Latvia in hockey a few times. Any time we go to new area though, we do research and we actually had a great program where all the leaders from each nation came to Canada, and we put on a really large educational session. A professor from the Latvian Defence Academy came to brief us, as did Colonel Lejiņš (Commander of the Latvian Land Forces Brigade). By early March we had a really good impression of what to expect – Latvian geography, their culture, the people, the infrastructure etc. As soldiers, we tend to be curious people, so everyone has read the history of the Baltic States and knows about names like Kārlis Ulmanis. It’s a good idea to know what you’re getting into – we gave briefings to all the soldiers. They knew what they were in for. And then I was lucky enough to come here for a month in April for exercise “Summer Shield’, where I got to see the terrain, and also meet all the Brigade personalities. This terrain is very familiar. There is a province in Canada called New Brunswick that is just like Latvia. It’s almost the same size, it’s got a coast line, the trees, the rivers, the climate – it’s very familiar for the Canadians that came here. So I think we had a pretty good idea of what we were in for and I don’t think there’s been any big surprises to be honest.
— How is you cooperation going, you said about cooperation between Canadians and Latvians? What you would say, what is, like, most important to do – you said training? And what do you see what should be worked more on that, something, you know, like learning some special things, because as you said in different countries are doing different? Also with the Latvians another countries too, like Poland and Italy? How is this cooperation going? You are coming together and deciding which way to go or how you manage things or?
— The great thing about being a part of NATO, is that there are NATO publications and NATO standing agreements, and we all signed on to all of them. I’ll give you an example – radio procedures: there is a NATO book called ACP 125 and we all follow it. Everyone knows that that is the book on radio procedure and we all follow it. We are part of the Latvian Brigade. They have 1st and 2nd Battalions at the Latvian weekly Brigade meeting and I sit in the 3rd Battalion seat. I go to the meetings and I get direction, I bring up any points, and so the battlegroup has been integrated into the Latvian structure. That’s not just at that weekly meetings – for example our operations officer goes to weekly range and deconfliction meetings. So with the Latvian Brigade it’s going quite well and when we were on ‘Summer Shield’, we took orders from the Brigade, translated them into the battlegroup orders, which was seamless because we speak the same kind of tactical language – defend, block, delay, those kind of things, just as long as you keep your concepts simple, which is a great thing to do anyways for soldiers - to keep things simple. Internal to the battlegroup, we knew that we had to quickly overcome any interoperability challenges, and so it was great when I referred to all the national leadership that came to Canada, we took a full day to write out some of those challenges that we foresaw, and what we could do about them ...