Sharpening war skills

TWO Townsville units swapped the dusty plains of the Taji Military Complex for the dense Australian bushland in Shoalwater Bay for a backto- basics test of their fundamental warfighting skills.

Exercise Hamel was the first major activity for the personnel from the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and 2nd Cavalry Regiment, who both completed six month deployments in an advise and assist role for Iraqi forces as rotations five and six of Task Group Taji. This year, the 3rd Brigade played the role of the adversary for the Brisbane- based 7th Brigade in the fictitious war as it entered the “reset” phase of its force generation cycle.

3RAR Private Marco Garbellotto said the tough Aussie landscape had provided challenges.

“The terrain is a lot rougher … over there it’s more flat and sandy … it’s my first time at Shoalwater Bay, it’s good we’re not swimming in mud,” he said.

“I guess it’s been a while since we’ve done this kind of role and we’re just establishing our own ( medical) evacuation section as well.”

Major Ed Cousins said the exercise provided an “excellent” opportunity for 3RAR to consolidate their war skills.

“I was on Task Group Taji and one of the things we focused on over there when we weren’t working with the Iraqis was our skills and combat shooting skills and field craft and medical skills,” he said. “So it’s certainly not been too much of a shock to come into foundation war- fighting from a deployment in Iraq.”

At the beginning of the year, 3RAR received its first allocation of M113 armoured personnel carriers from 2Cav.

Over the next year and a half, 3RAR will transition from a Standard Infantry Battalion to a Mechanised Infantry Battalion. Maj Cousins said 3RAR had 30 M113 armoured personal carrier vehicles, which would increase to 55 in August. The unit had about 60 personnel as drivers with 20 crew commanders.

“We’re in a pretty good position from a qualification perspective to run the vehicles that we’ve got,” he said.

“For the second six months of the year we’re going to focus heavily on training and certainly once Exercise Hamel is over our focus will shift to individual skills training.”

Maj Cousins said the transition was transpiring smoothly, with 3RAR aiming for a “blended” approach.

“The 2nd Cavalry Regiment supported us and what we aimed for was a black cap or cavalry soldier with a green hat or infantry soldier working together side- by- side so that draws a lot of the knowledge from the cavalry soldiers,” he said.