Crash APCs to stay in service
SOLDIERS will continue to use M113 armoured personnel carriers vehicles despite pending investigations into three separate training incidents last week, including one in which a trooper was killed.
The Department of Defence has confirmed immediately after the accident at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area on May 4, which killed 21- year- old Stuart Reddan, all training and use of the M113 vehicles stopped to allow for investigations and welfare support of soldiers.
But the exercise, including the use of M113s, resumed the next day.
Following the two separate vehicle accidents in the Townsville Field Training Area on May 1 and 3, which left five soldiers injured, training was also im- mediately suspended while casualty treatment and evacuations occurred.
Once the evacuations were completed by the Queensland Ambulance Service, the exercise, including the use of the M113 vehicles, also continued.
A Defence spokesman said army investigations into the two separate vehicle accidents at the Townsville Field Training Area were expected to be completed in the next two weeks.
The spokesman said investigations into the accident at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area by the ADF Investigative Service, the Queensland Police Service and ComCare were ongoing.
“At the completion of inquiries, Defence will consider a range of factors to inform whether the reports are publicly released,” the spokesman said.
“The public release of a report, all or part, takes into account a wide range of factors including the views of the family and the views of persons potentially af- fected by the report’s release.” The M113s have provided the ADF with a protected mobility and armoured fighting capability since the Vietnam War, but last week’s incidents were not the first to result in serious injury or the death of Australian soldiers.
The vehicles have deployed on ADF operations, including Somalia and Timor Leste. The army has 431 of them in service, which are primarily employed in domestic field training.
In 2011, a carrier carrying nine soldiers rolled down an embankment during a night exercise at Shoalwater Bay.
At the Puckapunyal training grounds in 2009 Private David Jon Smith, 25, died in a carrier accident.
Corporal Jason Sturgess, 28, of the Lavarack Barracks’ based B Squadron 3rd/ 4th Cavalry Regiment was the crew commander of an M113 and was killed when the vehicle ran off the road near the base of Herveys Range.