CANADIAN FORCES BASE SUFFIELD, Alberta, Canada – Units from the U.S. Army’s premier all hazards command will participate in live agent chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) training with NATO partners during Exercise Precise Response at Canadian Forces Base Suffield in Alberta, Canada, July 11 – 29.
American Soldiers from the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives (CBRNE) Command will train with hundreds of CBRN troops from Canada, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia and the United Kingdom during the annual exercise.
Canadian Armed Forces Capt. Stephen Stecura, the Exercise Precise Response Joint Task Force public affairs officer, said the exercise supports the readiness of the NATO Response Force’s CBRN Defense Battalion.
Stecura said Exercise Precise Response directly contributes to the development and enhancement of CBRN defense capabilities.
Canada has hosted Exercise Precise Response every year since 2004, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions. More than 4,000 NATO troops have trained during previous iterations of the exercise.
The Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland-based 20th CBRNE Command is home to 75 percent of the Active Duty U.S. Army’s CBRN specialists and Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians, as well as the 1st Area Medical Laboratory, CBRNE Analytical and Remediation Activity, five Weapons of Mass Destruction Coordination Teams and three Nuclear Disablement Teams.
From the 20th CBRNE Command, the Fort Bliss, Texas-based 22nd Chemical Battalion; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington-based 11th CBRN Company (Technical Escort); Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based 21st CBRN Company; and the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland-based 1st Area Medical Laboratory will participate in the exercise.
Soldiers and U.S. Army civilians from 20th CBRNE Command routinely deploy from 19 bases in 16 states to take on the world’s most dangerous hazards in support of joint, interagency and allied operations.
Maj. Joshua M. Carmen, the chief of the 1st Area Medical Laboratory’s Biological Threat Assessment Section, said field training exercises like Precise Response help his Soldiers to validate their capabilities together with international partners in an austere environment.
“This builds a greater shared understanding of how an integrated network of sampling, receiving, testing and reporting of potentially hazardous materials looks and will highlight gaps within our team that we can work to close, and any seams between teams that need to be smoothed out,” said Carmen.
“As a team, we are confident in our people, technical skills and processes that allow us to accomplish our mission,” said Carmen, a 19-year U.S. Army veteran from Phoenix who has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. “Working with a partner nation always improves our ability to support international missions, and having so many nations concentrated in one exercise, along with the live agents, makes this a great opportunity to see how our multinational partners operate and lets them see our capabilities.”
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