THE MOORLAND NEAR the north Cork village of Kilworth has played host to countless rain-sodden, mud-caked Irish soldiers for decades.
It is 14,000 acres of bogland, forestry and rolling fields and is one of the Defence Forces key training grounds. There are extensive gun ranges and also training areas where soldiers can practice their battle movements.
This week the facility, known as Lynch Camp in honour of local revolutionary General Liam Lynch, played host to NATO assessors and Irish troops from across the country but particularly from Two Field Engineer Company based at Custume Barracks in Athlone.
The Journal went along to visit the soldiers as they prepared to meet their NATO assessors – for many of them the preparations have taken more than a year.
The exercise is similar to the artillery Operational Capabilities Concept evaluation (OCC) which led to angry exchanges in the Dáil as People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy questioned Tánaiste Micheál Martin on its appropriateness given Ireland’s neutrality.
Ireland is a partner nation with NATO through an initiative entitled Partnership for Peace since 1999 – this gives the Irish military access to a number of capability development programmes, one of which is OCC.
The OCC evaluation looks at more than 100 key areas and they assess various aspects of the work of the military specialists – at the end a report is compiled and recommendations, both positive and negative.
For NATO it is about bringing partnership countries to a level so that they can work with alliance militaries but it is clear, from our visits to units, that the Irish Defence Forces have taken the concept to bring about incremental improvements.
This week’s evaluation is the first meeting they have with the NATO team but the big test comes in November. This week was the self evaluation in which they can test the capabilities and identify areas that need improvement – the winter examination will then be the full assessment with no room for error.
The exercise scenario, devised by Commandant Adrian Quinn, who is the Chief Instructor in the Defence Forces’ school of engineering, is identical to the early phases of a lot of the peace enforcement missions the Irish Defence Forces have faced on deployment abroad.
The overall theme is centred around the Irish Army, working with international partners, to secure a demilitarised buffer zone in a country suffering in the midst of a civil war.
The tests will then look at various challenges that are needed for a military engineering team to help ground forces move in and take ground to break the deadlock. Those operations include bridging across rivers, demining and opening up routes for the soldiers to take ground – they will be tested on how they do that.
Similar incidents have happened across history, not least in Ireland, but also in the Balkans and other locations.
There is plenty of debate around Ireland, neutrality and NATO but the soldiers on the ground we spoke to care little for that discussion – they speak of getting more professional courses and qualifications as they prepared for the evaluation.
We took a tour of the site in the company of some of those soldiers – morale was high with groups of personnel chatting and joking waiting for the next job.
The Journal observed soldiers in specialist chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) suits practising drills.
Lt Darren Fehilly, an engineering officer, was in charge of a team of soldiers running a decontamination operation. They were all dressed in heavy suits with gas masks and rubber gloves.
The generators and tanks containing the decontaminants can all be carried on the back of trucks on sled-like bases and placed anywhere on the battlefield. Their capabilities are not just for personnel, they can also decontaminate whole areas including lengths of roadway.
Shouts of “gas, gas, gas” went up and the team rapidly dressed in the equipment – they have just nine seconds to seal themselves inside their suits. They then demonstrated decontaminating an armoured personnel carrier using specialist washes.
Fehilly said that preparation for the OCC process had been of benefit to both the troops he leads and his own skills.
“It’s an opportunity to benchmark ourselves against the global standard. We’re training ourselves to get up to it and then
“It’s about getting the best practise from NATO – we can keep ourselves safer by using these NATO standards.
“The Salisbury incident in the UK is not outside the realms of possibility here in Ireland, your neutrality or not doesn’t matter, but that’s a perfect example of how this training and equipment can be deployed,” he said.
The Salisbury poisoning involved two suspected members of the Russian intelligence services poisoning a former colleague Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
An innocent bystander Dawn Sturgess died and at least two other people were injured when they were exposed to the chemical agent.
Further across the barren moorland the engineers had constructed a small pop-up military base inside what is known as a makeshift Forward Operating Base (FOB).
This will act as their home for the duration of the exercise as they work through the different scenarios.
The FOB is completely self-sufficient thanks to the work of the military plumbers, electricians, carpenters and communications specialists.
There is also a specialist search team tasked with finding and defusing roadside bombs and other threats.
There is a medical area as well as a technologically advanced command post with computer systems that track where on the battlefield the Irish units are. Tents to live in, a mess hall, briefing and a parking area for heavy machinery and armoured vehicles.
As we were there an alert was launched to defend the base from attack – soldiers rushing to get their kit on and return fire in a simulated attack. A Quick Reaction Force (QRF) of MOWAG armoured personnel carriers sped from the fort-like structure and reported back that they had taken a prisoner.
Soldiers we spoke to recalled that this was similar to incidents they had experienced on peacekeeping service abroad.
Three soldiers, two Corps of Engineer electricians and a lieutenant, spoke to us about their work.
The electricians, Privates Ryan Moore and Stephen Murphy, had served in Syria in recent times and they said that the OCC process has helped their careers with new courses and qualifications for them.
Lt Zoe O’Hanlon’s role is to lead the administration of the pop-up base, ensuring that it is adequately stocked with rations and also monitoring the deployment of the soldiers as they go on patrol.
O’Hanlon has just recently been commissioned as an officer but on leaving her training three months ago she was immediately involved in the preparations for the OCC.
Moore and Murphy perform in a variety of roles besides their electrical skills, they also work on plant machinery and work at the decontamination line.
Moore said: “We’ve got different courses through this and that will stand to us when we’re going overseas in the next while. It’s made us more competent at the basics, like medical and radios.
“It has helped me a lot to get me out of my comfort zone. We would have got basic medical training say but I learned a lot more because of us doing this.”
Back down the hill and in Lynch Camp’s offices a team of international NATO military experts were preparing the assessment.
Speaking to senior officers, it is clear that while OCC for NATO is about interoperability the Defence Forces are using it to build and assess their own capabilities at a national level.
An Irish officer working with that group is Commandant Daire Roche explains how the military leadership view the OCC process.
The engineering group leading the exercise is selected from the eastern portion of the country. Roche said that their skills have already been tested on international deployments to Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.
He said that the capabilities and skills that are in that unit mean that they were the group selected for the evaluation.
“The Government white paper on defence which runs from 2015 to 2025 recognises rightfully that NATO best practice is international military best practice,” he said.
Roche said that the Defence Forces have taken the OCC process and turned it into an Irish version to assess individual units. Irish military leadership now use the systems and methodology
“Not only have we learned from OCC what the international best standards are but we’ve taken those methodologies and have converted them to domestic versions.
“So that when we send guys to Syria or Lebanon they go through an Irish process that mirrors what we learned with the NATO processes.
“So we’ve woven that into our own practices and procedures and turned into into a domestic national setting,” he said.
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