by Ken Pole
At the last tally by the United Nations, dozens of member states continued to struggle with various types of unexploded ordnance (UXO), some of it dating back more than a century. Not all are the legacy of combat; many continue to be found in abandoned military facilities, including former test ranges in this country that are gradually being cleaned up by Canadian Army experts.
However, most of the Army’s current UXO focus is overseas, working with international allies to train friendly forces on how to deal with the deadly detritus of ever-evolving landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), as well as the proliferation of 3D printing and drones.
Landmines arguably remain the biggest challenge, as evidenced in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Eastern Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014, where an estimated 174,000 square kilometres of the country is riddled with landmines planted by Russian soldiers and Ukraine’s defending forces.
That area is nearly the size of New Brunswick, where 5th Canadian Division Support Base Gagetown played host in October to Exercise Ardent Defender, the 11th in a series of Canadian-led events where allies gather to showcase their abilities while competing and sharing their expertise.
The latest exercise included Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians from Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States – Canada’s partners in the Five Eyes security alliance – as well as Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Many of the relationships were cemented during Canada’s 2001-2014 combat mission in Afghanistan, where IEDs were a favourite and tactically effective Taliban weapon. Ninety-seven of the 159 Canadians who died there were killed by explosives.
The nearly 400 participants in Ardent Defender 2024 also included representatives from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military and intelligence arms, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Brussels, and the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Unit in Mons.
Ardent Defender has “grown from a small tactical operator-focused level to … a premier venue for [training] operators — the technicians who go out to render safe or dispose of the explosive threat,” explained Major Vincent Dupont, a combat engineer and the exercise director. “[They are] critical enablers on the battlefield for force protection.”
They also collect disarmed devices and other materiel that can help military intelligence analysts to put terrorists and their networks out of business.
“There are already linkages through which we share information, techniques and procedures,” Dupont told Canadian Army Today. “These are long-standing relationships … which have evolved and are strong. They allow us to stay on top of the joint operational environment that each of those countries see worldwide. We share information force-to-force on the threats that are out there. We get together, train and learn from each other … so that when we are deployed into an international setting, we’re able to operate efficiently with other nations as our partners.”
A Regular Force member since joining up in 2006, the native of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., earned a Royal Military College civil engineering degree which saw him serving in multiple units in Valcartier. Dupont also added a Master’s in structural and blast engineering from the University of Florida, and was among 120 Canadian Armed Forces personnel deployed to Senegal in 2019 as part of Operation Presence in support of a larger Canadian contingent within the UN peacekeeping mission in neighbouring Mali – a country still struggling with major UXO issues from years of civil war.
Ex Ardent Defender is a multinational training exercise that involved nearly 400 soldiers from nine allied nations in Gagetown In mid-October. Photo: Cpl Brad Upshall
Canada has emerged as a global leader in the campaign against landmines, including the signing in Ottawa in 1997 of the UN Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, ratified by more than 160 countries. It has since supported demining initiatives through the UN, providing training and funding for mine clearing in several countries fractured by internal conflict.
Under the umbrella of Operation Unifier-Poland over the past two years, some 50 Canadian combat engineers have instructed more than 1,200 Ukrainian sappers on de-mining and other capabilities. That overall commitment is currently extended until at least March 2026.
Ardent Defender, an inherently serious affair, began with a “friendly icebreaker” Top Team competition that included a “bomb suit relay” in which competitors in bulky protective suits, weighing up to 33 kilograms, had to navigate a series of obstacles in a timely fashion. Dupont said the competition upped the seriousness factor with “a threat lane” where competitors had to clear an area seeded with threats on the way to the finish line. “It was pretty much a rehearsal for what they would be doing during the exercise itself.”
The exercise also included simulated booby traps designed to detonate when a doorway is breached, a common enemy tactic to protect weapons caches or simply to warn an enemy when a door is opened. The teams used “real-life tools to disrupt or render safe the devices” but nothing went “bang.” Instead, a failed attempt would set off an audible tone akin to those emitted by some birthday cards when they’re opened.
“They know that if they had been in a real scenario, they would have detonated it,” said Dupont. “We try to make it so that the device, the ordnance or system of devices is something they’ve not dealt with before.”
Unfortunately, UXOs are an endless job opportunity, Dupont agreed. Operators not only have to contend with evolving modern threats, but also with the decades-old legacy weapons still being found around the world. “We still train for those, learning from the past and staying on top of the game,” he said. “That’s important for us as we move into a new era of conflicts post-Afghanistan, where IEDs were prevalent.”
For Ardent Defender, “we’re moving away from the rudimentary low technology, ‘homemade’ stuff we saw in Afghanistan.”
That said, disabling threats sometimes must still be done the “old way,” notably digging carefully round a land mine prior to disabling it. “Some mines deployed all over the world have specific characteristics for how they can be rendered safe,” Dupont explained. “You don’t know how long they’ve been in place or who [placed them], and that needs careful assessment and possibly disposal in place. That’s not the safest way, but is sometimes the only way to provide local force protection.”
Overall, Dupont said, while Ardent Defender 2024 went “really well … there’s always room to grow, to build efficiencies so that in the coming years it’s going to be even better.”
The after-action analysis is well underway, and the Army is already planning for next year, again at Gagetown. “For us, the location is key,” Dupont. “We’re well supported by the base; it allows us to conduct multiple ranges every day while having minimal impact on the local population and other units in training.”