The Świętoszów sappers’ training involved improving the operation of an Obstacle Detachment formed from the mine-laying platoon during combat operations. The purpose of this detachment is to limit the enemy’s mobility and inflict the greatest possible losses on its troops, while its main task is to lay scatterable minefields, known as maneuver mining.
This is carried out using Kroton scatterable mine-laying carriers. “As the only brigade in the land forces, we are fortunate to be equipped with the Kroton Engineering Scatterable Mine-Laying System,” explains Major Ireneusz Marciniak, head of the Engineering Corps of 10BKPanc. He adds: “The Brigade Obstacle Detachment consists of four Krotons. During the activities conducted as part of the Borsuk-16 tactical exercise with troops, the Brigade Obstacle Detachment was assigned to cover the left flank of the tank battalion. Put simply, this type of operation involves the detachment moving to a designated mine-laying line and mining it by laying a scatterable minefield if the enemy attempted to attack us from the flank and cut off the first-echelon subunits from the reserve companies and the battalion’s logistical elements.”
Maneuver mining is the main task of the mine-laying platoon. The activities carried out by the sappers take place regularly during every major exercise. However, it is a fairly complicated task, and Second Lieutenant Andrzej Dobrzyński, commander of the mine-laying platoon, explains how it proceeds: “Before beginning the operation, the mine cassettes must be collected sufficiently in advance and prepared by using an appropriate tester to check the serviceability of the firing circuits in all cassettes and mines. The control units on the vehicles must then be prepared, and the correct operation of the entire electrical system responsible for launching the mines must be checked.”
After that, all that remains is to prepare the vehicles, form the columns, check communications, and issue the appropriate commands to the drivers. Then the Krotons can begin mining.