Fatal chopper crash at Talisman Sabre 23 reveals the daily danger for ADF staff
The tragic loss of four Aussie personnel has revealed the life and death moments our soldiers face each time they go to work.
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The men and women of the Australian Defence Force put their lives on the line every time they put on their uniforms.
There should not be any doubt they are courageous, skilled, dedicated and determined to protect the values and freedoms some of us in civilian life take for granted.
Yesterday four paid the ultimate price.
The biennial Talisman Sabre 23 exercise, like every iteration since they began in 2005, is a war games designed to push personnel and hardware to their limits, to test their mettle, skill and resolve.
It’s not a recruitment drive nor a public show of force.
It is a complex multi-layered program to exercise every aspect of our military personnel on land, sea and air and their interoperability with the combined forces of our allies.
The standard is high, very high, and while those involved make it look easy safety and security is paramount, but accidents sadly do happen. Risks and dangers in these things are deemed “substantial”.
That’s not necessarily a criticism of anyone, and make no mistake, several months of planning go into these things.
But picture this.
You have more than 30,000 military personnel from more than a dozen armed forces with their own aircraft, warship and armoured vehicles and weaponry operating on an integrated multi – layered scenario exercise.
They are going their hardest pushing themselves and machines to the limits.
No level of planning can stop an incident, it can only minimise it happening.
It will be for a coronial inquiry in parallel with a military review to determine what happened in this incident. But there can be little doubt the crew had been given it their all in the name of the patch on their shoulder and the uniform on their bodies.
Director of the exercise ADF Brigadier Damien Hill remarked there were more than 40 “firsts” - things being done for the first time during these exercises by our forces and those of our allies.
New scenarios, new weapons including long range missiles and new tactics designed to mimic the next likely conflict around offshore littoral manoeuvres and compact deployment missions about the Pacific and islands far from what our troops have trained for in the Middle East and the desert over the past 20 years.
“A lot of the exercise design isn’t what I have decided needs to be done, it’s a collaboration of all the nation’s participating,” he said last week as the two-week exercise kicked off.
“Talisman is certainly the pinnacle of exercise we run in the ADF, it certainly is challenging but equally a rewarding exercise to be part of to see our men and women work with so many other nations is fantastic.”
In 2005 Talisman Sabre was zealously protected as a bilateral exercise between the ADF and the US but by 2011 it was opened up to other nations.
In 2021 Talisman Sabre involved about 17,000 troops from seven nations, half of what it is today.
The combat scenarios - involving a fictitious enemy known as Olvanians - are now more complex involving multinational, multi-service but all designed for combat readiness.
In addition to Australia and the US, TS23 will also include participants from Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and the United Kingdom. India dropped out but the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are attending as observer nations for the exercise running in WA, across the Top End, off the Queensland coastline all the way down to NSW and out to Norfolk Island.
The ADF literally runs dozens of exercises, albeit on a smaller scales, each year and unfortunately there are incidents, largely road or land-based accidents.
In US military exercises, such are their scale and complexity, deaths are factored in. That’s not to diminish loss of life, and every single loss is felt throughout the broader military family let alone their personal ones.
The death of the four Australian crew will be felt not just by their families but by the 60,000 troops in our armed forces and tens of thousands more foreign ones in Australia at the moment.
It is a sad outcome and a risk every man and woman in the ADF who signs up understands and accepts.
And yet they return the next day to do it all again for themselves, their families and the broader community. They put in for what we can get out in terms of national security. And that is something Lest we Forget.
AUSTRALIAN MILITARY TRAINING DISASTERS
2017
Exercise Wallaby
September 15
Singapore soldier killed in Bionix Infantry Fighting Vehicle crash at the Shoalwater Bay military training area outside of Rockhampton.
Talisman Sabre 2017
August 5
Three US Marines killed in an MV-22 Osprey crash near Rockhampton shortly after the conclusion of Talisman Sabre 2017
Routine training exercises, 2017
May 10
Australian Army soldier dead after being accidentally shot in the head during a live firing exercise at the Mount Bundey Training Area, outside of Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory.
May 4
Australian soldier killed in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area near Rockhampton after being struck by a tree branch while a passenger in a M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC).
May 3
Two 22-year-old defence personnel were injured at the Townsville Field Training Area at High Range when their armoured vehicle hit a rock.
May 2
Three Australian soldiers injured at the Townsville Field Training Area after the M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier they were in hit a tree.
Talisman Sabre, July 2011
Nine Australian soldiers injured, including one seriously in an armoured personnel carrier crash at Shoalwater Bay Military Training area outside of Rockhampton during Exercise Talisman Sabre 2011.
RAAF Sergeant dead after being caught in an explosion at the Rockhampton airport during Talisman Sabre 2011.
1996 Townsville Black Hawk crash
18 SAS troops die after two Blackhawk choppers collided during a training exercise.
1987 Moruya crash
An RAAF pilot and a United States air force navigation expert were killed when their F111 supersonic bomber crashed into the sea off Moruya, NSW.
1987 F111 Tenterfield crash
Two Royal Australian Air Force pilots lost their lives in a training exercise crash in NSW.
- Additional reporting by Jodie Munro O’Brien
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