Nine NATO Allies are gathering in the Polish-led multinational exercise “Dragon 2024”. The exercise involves infantry operations and urban combat, and a live-fire tank exercise.
Synopsis
Nine Allies are participating in the Polish-led multinational exercise “Dragon 2024”. It involves troops from France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States. The exercise helps NATO Allies train on military operations at both the tactical and operational level. It involves training on infantry operations and urban combat, and a live-fire tank exercise.
Exercise Dragon falls under Steadfast Defender 2024 – NATO’s largest exercise in decades. Steadfast Defender 2024 is testing the Alliance’s new regional defence plans with forces practising rapid deployment and combat in both Norway and Poland. It is enabling Allies to demonstrate their ability to command and control large ground, air and sea forces across significant distances, within the Euro-Atlantic area.
Exercise Dragon 2024 runs from 4 to 14 March.
Footage includes shots of a Polish Pilica anti-aircraft system operating, US troops practising tank recovery operations, M1 Abrams tanks firing, troops embarking and disembarking from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and trench-clearing operations, as well as French infantry firing, and going through urban combat training. Footage also includes interviews with two French and one US officer.
Transcript
—SHOTLIST—
(00:00) VARIOUS SHOTS – POLISH PILICA ANTI-AIRCRAFT SYSTEM TRACKING A DRONE
(00:21) CLOSE-UP SHOTS – SLOW MOTION SHOTS OF POLISH ANTI-AIRCRAFT SYSTEM BEING OPERATED
(01:08) WIDE SHOTS – US ARMOURED RECOVERY VEHICLE PREPARING MOVING IN PLACE FOR A RECOVERY OPERATION DURING THE EXERCISE
(01:28) VARIOUS SHOTS – US ARMY SOLDIERS ENGAGING IN A RECOVERY OPERATION DURING THE EXERCISE
(02:17) VARIOUS SHOTS – M1 ABRAMS TANKS MANOEUVRING TO A FIRING RANGE
(02:31) WIDE SHOT – US ARMOURED RECOVERY VEHICLE MOVING TO A FIRING RANGE
(02:40) WIDE SHOT – M1 ABRAMS TANKS STANDING BY ON A FIRING RANGE
(02:45) VARIOUS SHOTS – M1 ABRAMS TANKS FIRING
(02:58) VARIOUS SHOTS – M1 ABRAMS TANKS MANOEUVRING BACK TO BASE
(03:35) VARIOUS SHOTS – FRENCH VBCI VEHICLES (ARMOURED INFANTRY FIGHTING VEHICLE) MANOEUVRING IN AN OPEN FIELD
(04:04) VARIOUS SHOTS – FRENCH TROOPS SETTING UP POSITION AND PREPARING TO OPEN FIRE ON A FIRING RANGE DURING THE EXERCISE
(04:39) VARIOUS SHOTS – FRENCH TROOPS OPENING FIRE ON A FIRING RANGE DURING THE EXERCISE
(04:56) WIDE SHOT – FRENCH TROOPS STANDING BY ON A FIRING RANGE
(05:00) WIDE SHOT – FRENCH TROOPS EMBARKING IN AN ARMOURED VBCI
(05:08) VARIOUS SHOTS – FRENCH ARMOURED VBCI CLOSING ITS HATCH AND DRIVING AWAY
(05:23) MEDIUM SHOT – A US ARMY BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLE AND US TROOPS MOVING INTO POSITION FOR AN INFANTRY TRENCH-CLEARING EXERCISE
(05:34) WIDE SHOT – US TROOPS DISEMBARKING FROM A US ARMY BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLE
(05:39) WIDE SHOT – A US ARMY BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLE CLOSING ITS HATCH, WHILE OTHER BRADLEYS MOVE INTO POSITION ON A FIRING RANGE
(05:45) VARIOUS SHOTS – US TROOPS MOVING THROUGH A TRENCH COMPLEX DURING A TRENCH-CLEARING OPERATION DURING THE EXERCISE
(06:00) VARIOUS SHOTS – US TROOPS SETTING UP POSITION IN A TRENCH COMPLEX
(06:37) VARIOUS SHOTS – US TROOPS MOVING OUT OF THE TRENCH COMPLEX
(06:46) WIDE SHOT – A US ARMY BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLE MANOEUVRING AND OPENING HATCH FOR US TROOPS
(06:57) VARIOUS SHOTS – US TROOPS EMBARKING ON A BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLE
(07:12) VARIOUS SHOTS - A FRENCH SOLDIER FIRING A MACHINE GUN FROM A WINDOW DURING URBAN COMBAT TRAINING
(07:24) VARIOUS SHOTS - FRENCH TROOPS MANOEUVRING IN, OUT AND AROUND BUILDINGS DURING URBAN COMBAT TRAINING
(08:04) SOUNDBITE (FRENCH) - Captain Pierre-Louis, Deputy Officer, 5th Dragons Regiment, French Army
“We’re participating in the Polish exercise, “Dragon 24”. It’s a Polish national exercise, some NATO members were invited, France being one of the invitees.”
(08:15) SOUNDBITE (FRENCH) - Captain Pierre-Louis, Deputy Officer, 5th Dragons Regiment, French Army
“The exercise consists of three phases. A logistical deployment from France. A tactical and technical deployment on the ground, which lasted from our arrival on 21 February up until two days ago, in which we had a wet-gap crossing of the Vistula, a 300-km advance to contact. We’re now starting the last phase, a live-fire phase with a combined-arms, joint, Allied exercise.”
(08:42) SOUNDBITE (FRENCH) - Captain Pierre-Louis, Deputy Officer, 5th Dragons Regiment, French Army
“We haven’t done the armoured vehicle part since 1996 and now we are doing it in a joint and multinational setting. So it’s especially interesting for us. From my unit’s point of view, it allows us to push our vehicles to their limits. We don’t often do 300 km in a row with a battle tank.”
(09:00) SOUNDBITE (FRENCH) - Captain Pierre-Louis, Deputy Officer, 5th Dragons Regiment, French Army
“We’re entering a new era. Until now we were in a low-intensity era. The balance of power was systematically in our favour. Today with the feedback we’re getting from everything that’s happening all around the world, we’ve entered a new phase where we’re going to focus on high intensity. Instead of having a fight between the strong and the weak, we’re now going to have a fight between the strong and the strong; with the same technological capabilities, the same infrastructure, with sometimes situations where we’ll be destabilised. It’s something we feel when we train and we’re taking into account the whole variety of threats, that have been present since 2022 but also for the last five to six years in other parts of the world.
(09:38) SOUNDBITE - Lieutenant Colonel Kenton Komives, Commander, 3-15 Infantry Battalion, US Army
“Exercise Dragon, we brought the battalion, we’re an infantry battalion. So we have two infantry companies, with one armoured company, which is tanks. What we’re doing here during this exercise is lots of things. Starting with the Vistula River, we did a river-crossing down in that town and then we came up to here to do live-fire training. While we’re here we’re doing a lot of interoperability training, learning how other nations and NATO fight, and then how we can fight together to be better as an organisation.”
(10:10) SOUNDBITE - Lieutenant Colonel Kenton Komives, Commander, 3-15 Infantry Battalion, US Army
“So everything we do, we fight as a team, we’re never going to fight by ourselves. So having such a strong alliance that we have, and actually seeing all these nations being here is absolutely important for us to see how we can fight, how our equipment talks to each other and how we work together. It’s absolutely important to fight as an alliance and it’s just been a great experience for everybody.”
(10:29) SOUNDBITE - Lieutenant Colonel Kenton Komives, Commander, 3-15 Infantry Battalion, US Army
“When training in the US, you’re only with the other American units, so we understand the equipment. All of our equipment works together very well. But then when we come and train with all these different partners that we have, you have to get creative. How do we talk to each other, how do we communicate, how do we use their equipment, how do we use our equipment to get the end state that we’re looking at? It’s just being a really good force and a really good alliance.”
(10:54) SOUNDBITE - Lieutenant Colonel Kenton Komives, Commander, 3-15 Infantry Battalion, US Army
“The strongest military alliance, even today on the 25th anniversary of Poland joining NATO, being part of that ceremony today shows you how strong the bond is. And it does exactly what we’re supposed to do. We’re deterring aggression, we’re here doing that, and then as we’re doing that, the world knows how strong we are. That alliance alone and NATO coming together and showing what we can do is absolutely important for the world and for Europe, absolutely.
(11:21) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“My battlegroup is composed of different enforcements, belonging on my command post to IFV companies coming from my regiment. But I’m also in force with the 7th Armoured Brigade, French Army. Different elements: one Leclerc tank company, and also one combat engineers and some logistical enforcement.”
(11:44) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“It’s very important for the French land forces to work with the other NATO armies because it allowed us to discover new kinds of terrain in the east part of Europe.”
(11:54) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“The French battlegroup embedded into the Dragon 24 exercise is currently under the orders of the 10th Armoured Brigade from the Polish Army in close coordination with a German battalion and a Polish tank battalion.”
(12:11) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“This kind of exercise on the anniversary of NATO is important because it’s our common guarantee to maintain peace and safety in Europe. It’s also a good occasion for us to exchange about training, about our procedures and to have a concrete human and ground knowledge from each other.”
(12:33) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“We find good opportunities to learn lessons from our Polish and US and German colleagues because we discover some elements about wet-gap crossing, for example. We do also wet-gap crossing in France, as you can imagine, but not at the level of a brigade.”
(12:55) SOUNDBITE - Colonel Philippe, Commander, 35th Infantry Regiment, French Army
“Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, I think these kinds of exercises are a bit more serious from the top to the private. Because everyone understands that it’s a key element, that we need to be ready to protect our territories and the territories of our Allies on the eastern flank. And also the size of the exercise has increased from brigade to division level, and Dragon 24 is part of Steadfast Defender 24, which is the biggest exercise since the 80s in Europe.”
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