Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Charlottetown hosted a team of Canadian and Danish boarding parties for a training exercise.
Royal Danish Navy’s boarding team from Her Danish Majesty’s Ship (HDMS) Niels Juel joined the Canadian frigate in the Baltic Sea where she is currently part of NATO’s Standing Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1)
Royal Canadian Navy ships each have a boarding party made up of crew members who have other primary duties. An enhanced naval boarding party is an additional team with specialized skills. It works with the regular boarding party to enhance the ship’s maritime interdiction operation capability.
During this exercise, the enhanced naval boarding party worked with HMCS Charlottetown boarding party and the Danish boarding party, sharing knowledge and learning a different perspective.
“This combined training with our Danish counterparts expands our team’s way of thinking and problem solving, while allowing us to see challenges in the maritime environment from a different angle and cultural perspective,” said Lieutenant (N) Jacob Killawee, Enhanced Naval Boarding Party Team Lead.
The Royal Danish Navy’s boarding team has ten members, including one boarding officer and one assistant boarding officer. They visited HMCS Charlottetown on September 18 and 19, 2017, to participate in the exercise.
The training consisted of round-robin style stations, spanning topics including medical considerations, close quarter battle, tactical movement, personnel handling, small arms weapons training and search techniques. As part of the first training day, the Royal Danish Navy’s boarding team demonstrated their national doctrine, and the enhanced naval boarding party demonstrated Canadian procedures, highlighting recommended modifications to their methodology that could allow their team to conduct boardings more safely and efficiently.
Over the course of the two-day training program, the enhanced naval boarding party coached their own team and the Danish team through weapons handling, close quarters battle, use of force, personnel handling, and casualty scenarios. They practiced moving through a boarded ship safely and securely, moving up and down through ladders and hatches, extracting casualties from difficult spaces, detaining non-compliant personnel, and engaging in escalation of force scenarios simulating a hostile boarding environment.