WINNING COVID BATTLE

WHEN it comes to COVIDsafe plans, no one is exempt – not even the army.

Monday’s live fire exercise was conducted in accordance with state government COVID-19 regulations, changing how training is done and making things look a little different.

Mitigation strategies were put in place, and in exercises leading up to Monday’s attack during Exercise Brolga Run, the number of people in the field at any time was reduced.

It’s meant rotating soldiers through training activities to remain compliant strictions.

With many elements from other states ruled out, Brigadier Kahlil Fegan said he was confident whatever they lacked through physical teams or people on the ground had been replicated through other means.

“Normally we’d love to be able to have a bit more of a joint flavour, that is particularly our air force elements,” he said.

“Also the 6th Brigade, which is dispersed throughout Australia but predomiwith renantly in southeast Queensland, they have some very specialist niche capabilities we love to work with physically whenever we can and we’ve been unable to do that on this exercise.”

Brigadier Fegan said while the 3rd Brigade expected to provide some form of relief to southern states in the future, when that would occur was yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve always got force elements within the 3rd Brigade that are trained, ready, set aside and able to meet government requirements,” he said.