By Roman Yuriev, Serhii Burbela, and Natalia Kalyniuk
As Ukraine continues on its desired path towards NATO membership, Roman Yuriev, Seri Burble, and Natalia Kalyniuk detail Ukraine’s latest efforts to ensure full interoperability with NATO in CBRN protection and training.
Today’s challenges require that units of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine can operate in CBRN environments. In particular, the use of chemical weapons by the armed forces of the russian federation* against Ukraine poses new challenges and requirements for protecting our personnel from weapons of mass destruction.
To date, more than 3,500 cases of the enemy’s use of banned chemical weapons have been recorded by the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine, equivalent to between five and 30 per day. This has included 97 incidents against units of the State Border Guard Service during which 40 servicemen were injured to varying degrees.
To ensure the proper implementation of combat support measures, our partners constantly provide assistance in the form of modern CBRN protection, which requires proper training for their use. This is impossible without implementing modern technologies, innovations, and NATO standards in the training of our military personnel.
At the Madrid and Vilnius Summits in 2022 and 2023, Allies tasked NATO with helping Ukraine develop its own plan for a sustainable transition to NATO standards and Western military equipment, aimed at rebuilding its security and defense sector and moving Ukraine towards full interoperability with NATO.
In September 2023, NATO and Ukraine formally agreed on the Concept of the Interoperability Roadmap, which uses a hybrid approach based on both the NATO Defence Planning Process and NATO’s partnership processes.
For this purpose, initial NATO interoperability requirements for Ukraine were developed to inform decision-making, and to promote and ensure long-term interoperability of Ukrainian and NATO forces. These requirements would then be translated into national defense and security reform and planning.
Short-term Requirements
The initial requirement for interoperability concerns professional military education for all relevant defense and security forces to effectively and efficiently fulfil tasks and carry out missions.
Within three years, Ukraine must maintain a unified and integrated military education system for defense and security sector personnel through L1-L5 and non-commissioned officer training courses. Furthermore, Ukraine must extend the unified course planning system that meets the training needs of the Armed Forces to other relevant components of the defense and security sector by early 2026.
The primary tasks here include reviewing and, if necessary, modernizing the personnel management and training system by early 2027 to ensure that NATO operations and planning procedures are taught at every level of professional education, based on the NATO Operations Planning Directive and NATO standards. Ukraine will be:
- implementing the NATO standard BI-SCD 075-007 ‘Education and Training’ in the educational activities of military educational institutions
- decommissioning some operational and strategic level courses in the relevant professional military educational institutions in accordance with NATO requirements
- conducting an audit of the international assistance system in accordance with recommendations from NATO’s experts
- reviewing the system of military professions in cooperation with NATO
- transforming the collective training system in line with NATO requirements and procedures
- optimizing the number of educational institutions related to the defense and security sector; and introducing distance learning in defense and security sector institutions
- developing and implementing new training cycles for units that meet the new requirements, and upgrading relevant educational institutions to meet requirements of new units’ training cycles.
Naturally, these measures include ensuring that the leadership and faculty of relevant professional military educational institutions have the capacity to support the teaching process, the revision of statutes and manuals, and have the necessary funding.
Within two years of lifting martial law, Ukraine will optimize system implementation, personnel management, and human resource management to ensure that officers are appropriately qualified for promotion or appointment to positions of increased responsibility.
These requirements also concern CBRN protection and relevant training of military personnel. A broad spectrum of standards will be implemented, starting with ensuring individual capabilities of a serviceman in the face of CBRN contamination and ending with the actions of specialized units.
For example, according to the IO 1202 Soldier Individual Capabilities standard, the initial requirement for interoperability is to increase soldiers’ survivability, situational awareness, and lethality. To implement this requirement, all the latest models of CBRN equipment are used in training various categories of military personnel, depending on their competence. For this purpose, various training methods aimed at acquiring practical individual skills are used.
To implement the IO 3108 standard ‘Ground Combat Capabilities’ on the ability to operate for at least three days in CBRN conditions without degradation, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has implemented organizational and methodological recommendations on the impact of wearing individual chemical, biological, and radiological protective equipment on personnel during combat operations (STANAG 2499 Ed. 3/ATP-65 Ed. B).
Factors that can negatively influence the effectiveness of operational performance both by individual servicemen and military units – and ways to mitigate these factors – are taught to scientific and pedagogical staff and instructors during training.
Enabling Requirements
In terms of enabling requirements, CBRN protection is clearly defined in the IO 7201 standard ‘CBRN Protection’, where the initial requirement for interoperability is to ensure that enough basic and advanced CBRN protection capabilities are available, as well as appropriate training for key command and control facilities and deployed forces to enable effective operations in the face of CBRN threats and hazards.
To implement this requirement, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has developed organizational and methodological recommendations in a ‘List of basic weapons and means of radiological, chemical, and biological protection for servicemen and units of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine’ (STANAG 2352 Ed. 8/ATP-84 Ed. B). This document describes the requirements to permit operations in CBRN environments that may arise during the intentional or unintentional release of hazardous chemicals and other materials.
Following from these requirements, by early 2027 Ukraine must provide or have access to a live agent training site to ensure that all forces specializing in CBRN protection are properly trained. Furthermore, Ukraine must ensure that joint aspects are included in training and exercises of multifunctional CBRN units, and ensure that CBRN incidents are integrated into joint exercises and training, including civil-military cooperation.
Ukraine must also ensure the availability of CBRN personal protective equipment and training for all deployed personnel, in accordance with the standards STANAG 2352, 2499, 2520, 2521, and 4548 (AEP-38). Such equipment includes individual equipment for detecting chemicals, an individual dosimeter, individual respiratory protection equipment and protective clothing, first aid and self-treatment kits, and individual equipment for the decontamination of skin, clothing, personal equipment, and weapons.
CBRN knowledge management that provides expertise to defense organs with clearly defined roles and responsibilities at all levels of command should support effective civil-military cooperation to overcome large-scale CBRN consequences. Simultaneously, it must also maintain a national CBRN integrated command-and-control knowledge management system for CBRN warning and reporting. This system should be able to share information in near real-time, through secure and non-secure systems with other functional services.
By early 2027, Ukraine must ensure that all units up to the company level can submit CBRN defense reports in accordance with STANAG 2103 (ATP-45) and ADatP-3 requirements.
Medium-term Requirements
There also exists a range of medium-term requirements for implementation within the next 10 years. Detection, identification, and monitoring must be in accordance with STANAG 2352 and 2521 by early 2028, i.e. can provide relevant base units with portable, networked, multi-agent point chemical detectors, either stand-alone or vehicle-mounted. By the beginning of 2029, in accordance with STANAG 2352 and 2521, Ukraine must provide relevant base units with portable, networked radiation detectors, either stand-alone or vehicle-mounted.
By the beginning of 2030, Ukraine must have operational detection and preliminary chemical and radiological identification and monitoring capabilities using a combination of point, autonomous, or remote devices, and without maintenance. Ukraine must also provide all CBRN and reconnaissance units with portable point biological, chemical, and radiological detectors.
By the same deadline, Ukraine must provide portable stand-alone or vehicle-mounted biological detectors with network connectivity to detect, pre-identify, and warn users of the presence of biological warfare agents while minimizing the number of false alarms, as well as develop means of monitoring personal exposure to biological hazards and transmitting the collected data daily for further analysis and identification.
Finally, Ukraine must provide deployed collective protection against CBRN agents in accordance with STANAG 2352, 2515, 2521,2522 and 4634 (AEP-54), and, by early 2028, Ukraine must provide capabilities that will mitigate the consequences of CBRN incidents to meet the requirements of ATP-3.8.1, Volume I.
By early 2029, Ukraine must ensure that deployed forces can conduct immediate and rapid CBRN decontamination that meets the requirements of STANAG 2352 and 2521, and, by early 2030, in accordance with the standards set by STANAG 4653 (AEP-58), Ukraine must provide and enhance specialized CBRN capabilities to ensure effective decontamination.
These means should not degrade the environment, should be suitable for any equipment and personnel, and should be suitable for use in limited areas. In terms of CBRN knowledge management, by the beginning of 2028, Ukraine must establish a mechanism for the exchange of CBRN information between national centers and CBRN experts.
The Way Forward
We have described only a part of the steps for the planned implementation of NATO standards. An important element in this process is proper personnel training, which should be based on the use of modern and innovative teaching methods aimed at developing professional competence, improving practical readiness for military and professional activities, acquiring highly professional skills, and accumulating practical experience of war and terrorist attacks.
Roman Yuriev is the Chief of the CBRN & Metrology Support Unit of the Administration of Administration of the State Border Guards Service of Ukraine. Serhii Burbela is an associate professor of the Department of Combined Military Disciplines of the Faculty of State Border Security at the National Academy of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. Natalia Kalyniuk is a candidate of Pedagogical Sciences and senior teacher at the Department of English Language Study at the National Academy of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine.
* Editor’s note: words referring to the Russian Federation or people associated with it have been written in lower case at the authors’ request.
