Exercise Brolga Sprint successfully wraps up at Townsville Field Training centre
Troops from 3rd Brigade, US Marines and Japanese and Papua New Guinean soldiers have successfully completed a high-intensity, live-fire training regiment to cap off Exercise Brolga Sprint.
Townsville
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The multinational live fire activity Exercise Brolga Sprint 2024 has successfully wrapped up at the Townsville Field Training Area at High Range.
The exercise involved 3rd Brigade soldiers, US Marines and the Japanese Ground Force Defence and Papua New Guinea Defence Force troops in a combined arms live fire activity where infantry, armour, artillery and combat engineers working together to achieve the mission goal.
Commander 3rd Brigade Brigadier Dave McCammon said multi-nation activity involved complex live firing from a range of assets.
“The activity saw us integrate a range of different ammunition, natures and vehicles into a complex defensive shoot that sourced fire from everything from Javelin missiles through to 155 millimetre artillery.
“Training like this is incredibly complex in the first instance, for us to do, doing it with our partners takes it to a completely new level.
“The reason why it’s important is because it is so incredibly hard to do, if you don’t do it in rehearsals.”
He said using live ammunition required the highest level of safe and capable training.
“We integrate highly complex munitions, high explosive natures into a trace that saves us having to manage not only our movement, but the safety of the soldiers involved.
“So doing training at that level requires us to be able to understand how our weapon systems work, and how to employ our soldiers and equipment safely in that system.
“We do two different types of training, where you run what we call force on force training, which allows us to have an enemy that can think and act and, and come up with their own planning - we’ll use blank ammunition when we do that, as a safe environment.
“Once we’ve completed that we transition to live fire and while there’s no enemy, and we use targets, instead, what occurs is because of the safety requirements, and the use of high explosive nature is we have to add an added complexity to that training.”
The Brigadier said it was amazing to see how solders from 3rd Brigade melded with their training partners during the time frame of the exercise.
“It doesn’t occur anywhere better than when you place people under pressure. In complex situations, they come together as an effective team.
“I think over the next week or so we’ll see those teams continue to bond as they stay in and around Townsville, and they do some smaller training activities on the base here, but also get the opportunity to explore this great city.
“This year’s activity has significantly built on the interoperability that occurred during Talisman Sabre last year. And while we did some training with our Japanese and American partners last year, adding the level of live fire complexity we just have has taken our relationship and our training to a whole new level and hopefully into 2025 will see us grown in Talisman Sabre.”
Originally published as Exercise Brolga Sprint successfully wraps up at Townsville Field Training centre
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