‘Can’t be replaced’: Soldiers on the importance of Exercise Talisman Sabre

Australian Army Gunner Tyson Beharrell said he was proud to be in a regiment with “friendly, kind people” and put his hand up for Talisman Sabre for the practical experience.

Australian and US forces hold a live-fire exercise rehearsal during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2021.

Exercise Talisman Sabre 2021 was the first opportunity for Australian Army Gunner Tyson Beharrell to work with, and learn from, a foreign military.

“It’s been good having a conversation with them, understanding their style of field work,” he said.

“It's really good to see how different it is compared to our style.”

Hailing from district of Blacktown in New South Wales, Mr Beharrell joined the Army at the end of 2019.

“I had a few family members in the Army before me,” he said.

“Straight out of high school signed up, got accepted straight away, didn’t pick this role but it was my second on my list.”

Mr Beharrell said he was proud to be in a regiment with “friendly, kind people” and put his hand up for Talisman Sabre for the practical experience.

“I love my job,” he said.

“I like coming out into the field. I’m always there to volunteer for anything.”

Australian Army Gunner Tyson Beharrell.

The biennial Exercise Talisman Sabre is the largest training activity between Australia and the United States, and also involves Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

It is meant to test ability for participating forces and their equipment to work together in combat scenarios on land, sea, and in the air.

Australian and US forces showed off the Patriot surface-to-air missile system at Shoalwater Bay – the first time the missile was launched on Australian soil - prompting cheers among the soldiery.

Days later, after a live-fire rehearsal, helicopters, jets, and artillery both static and truck-mounted put on a demonstration watched by Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Defence Force Chief General Angus Campbell.

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United States Army Captain Phillip Le said that the US’s participation in the exercise “means that we’re able to send a message that we’re supporting and sustaining a free Indo-Pacific regions with our allies”.

“Nothing but good things to say about our allies and the individuals, the soldiers, and leaders that we’ve worked with, and we just really want to take this opportunity to really integrate our American soldiers with the Australian Defence Force to continue to build that relationship and alliance that we’ve had since World War One.

“This is the first time the Patriot missile system has been in Australia to conduct this interoperability and bilateral joint exercise with the Australian Defence Force.

“Our combatant commanders deploy our Patriot missile systems to their most critical assets when they are in an area of operations to defend their most important port of operations, most important airfields.

“This bilateral training allows us to demonstrate the ability to be interoperable with Australian weapons systems so we’re able to coordinate, be it communications, how we're going to engage targets in the sky together.”

Asked about the Chinese ship keeping an eye on the war games, Captain Le said “it doesn’t matter”.

United States Army Captain Phillip Le.

Major General Jake Ellwood said that Talisman Sabre enabled the Australian Army to practise a “multi-domain strike” requiring the cooperation of space, cyber, air, land, and sea forces.

“It’s highly complex, but very effective when done well,” he said.

“We talk through all the different threat systems that we were going to deal with, and then we work out how we want to strike it – it may be simultaneous, it may be sequential, and it may be by different weapon systems – and we make sure that we use the most appropriate weapon systems for a particular target.

“To orchestrate it all is particularly hard because you need to make sure the timing is right and the effect is right.

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Major General Ellwood said that aside from the war-fighting, the exercise developed relationships between individuals, and helped the Army prepare for not-combative situations.

“Interestingly,” he said, “in 2019 when I was commanding the joint task force for Talisman Sabre 2019, we wouldn’t have guessed that six months after that that we would have been deploying with a force around 6,500 including multinational forces to support the nation during the Black Summer fires, so again, while it’s very important for us to make sure that we can still war-fight, it also makes sure that we can do things other than war.

“An exercise of this scale can’t be replaced.”