SSR supports the Danish Frogmen Corps partly with staff personnel and partly with three special-recce patrols. This enhances the capacity of the Danish Frogman Corps, since more patrols enable simultaneous observation of several targets.

– Exercises like DANEX with the Danish Frogman Corps give a unique reoccurring chance to train together with some of the best soldiers in the country, says Captain (a) Morten Rask, the commanding officer for SSR and continues: – The SSR gets a lot of professional benefit from the training with the Danish Frogman Corps. The setting with many helicopters and assault craft is outstanding.

That SSR is assigned to the Danish Frogman Corps during DANEX 08 is not a coincidence. Already back on DANEX 05 a maritime special operations force consisting of the Danish Frogman Corps and SSR (at that time called Patrol Company HOK) was put together, where both staff and patrols worked together to locate and free an ambassador from hostile hostage-takers on the island of Bornholm.

Since SSR has participated in DANEX 06 and DANEX 07 as a special recce company available to the multinational naval force in the exercise. Here the SSR solved both recce and combat tasks directed towards the asymmetric hostile land forces threatening the naval force.

Information gathering for the Defence has been the SSR’s core competence since the units renowned predecessor “Special Intelligence Patrols” was established in 1959. SSR is no longer called the Patrol Company HOK, but is still the Danish Home Guard’s only patrol company and today SSR is not only available to the Army but also the Air Force, the Navy and the rest of the defence.

The staffs in the Danish Frogman Corps and the SSR are interoperable since they train with the same staff methodology. SSR patrols have for several years been trained on combat swimmer courses at the Danish Frogman Corps and up to DANEX 08 the soldiers have also been trained in fast-roping from helicopter and emergency procedures for a helicopter crash in water.

On this year’s DANEX exercise the SSR will be used both in the role as recce unit and as support unit when the Danish Frogman Corps will free hostages later in the exercise.

Read more about SSR under the menu About DANEX 08, About SSR

Read more on the SSR website