The course will run until 10 March this year and is the first of four sessions that OSL will conduct for 1WBPanc this year. One company will be trained during each session. In accordance with the decision of their superiors, one of the subunits of the 1st Warsaw Armored Brigade (1WBPanc) will be equipped with Leopard 2 tanks. Consequently, the Leopard Training Centre was tasked with training tank crews. The current course is attended by fourteen crews, comprising fourteen commanders, gunners, loaders and drivers. They are training in two groups: the first consists of Leopard tank crew specialists (commanders, gunners and loaders), while the second consists of drivers.
As Major Krzysztof Kacperek, commandant of the Leopard Training Centre, said: “Until now, the centre conducted two or three sessions a year for groups of six crews. Now it must meet the additional task of training a larger number of people, so soldiers from the tank battalions of the 11th Lubusz Armored Cavalry Division have reinforced us for this course. The main activities during the nine-week course include a series of theoretical lectures combined with practical training in tank construction, followed by simulator training and firing exercises using the AGDUS duel simulator. The crew training will conclude with live-ammunition firing from the Leopard 2 tank cannon. After a series of lectures combined with practical classes on tank construction, tank drivers will train on driving simulators and then in combat tanks.”
One of the subjects is practical training in loading tanks onto a railway platform, an essential skill for drivers that enables the tanks to be moved to the 1st Warsaw Armored Brigade. The trainees will acquire knowledge through subjects including the construction and operation of the Leopard 2 tank’s armament and military equipment, Leopard 2 tank gunnery training, Leopard 2 tank communications and driving instruction. The trainees use Poland’s only modern training facility of its kind: AGPT, AAT and ASPT simulators for gunnery and tactical training, a so-called driver’s stand, and tracked equipment: Leopard 2 and Leopard NJ tanks.
The course will end with examinations, as a result of which the soldiers will obtain authorization to operate tanks in their assigned service positions.
