Exercise Kakadu: Inside the Navy’s war games off the Top End coast on board HMAS Warramunga
In an undisclosed location north west of Darwin, two teams of highly trained sailors battle it out to rule the waves in sophisticated war games. See the behind-the-scenes photos.
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The UH-60M Black Hawk is at cruising altitude somewhere over the seas to Australia’s north not long after 0700 when it slips into stealth mode.
On board are sonar buoys designed to simulate an enemy submarine and bamboozle two teams of warships currently locked in a pitched battle for a contested island off the coast of Darwin.
“I reckon they’re trippin’,” the pilot quips as one of the buoys ploughs its way into the brackish waves below.
“Oh they’re definitely trippin’,” crackles the reply over the helo’s intercom.
“Ships be trippin’.”
Let the games begin.
A short time later, on board the Anzac class frigate HMAS Warramunga, Red Team lieutenant Dylan Phillips admits to being momentarily distracted by the decoy.
“My ops team did ask your pilot where he dropped the submarine and he said he couldn’t remember and wouldn’t tell us, so well played, we thought we’d try,” he grins.
Commander Phillips is captain of the Warramunga, which is part of a two-ship pair, with Singaporean frigate the RSS Supreme running point under the ultimate command of the Red Team leader on board the Japanese destroyer JS Ariake.
As part of Exercise Kakadu 2024, the team, which also includes an Indonesian contingent, has been tasked with defending the island from the Blue Team of the United States, Canada, France and Malaysia.
“It’s a bit like a crawl, walk, run,” Commander Phillips says of the exercise’s climax while taking a break from the war gaming on Wednesday.
“What we’re doing today is the free play, that’s the run phase, so it is an unscripted, as close to real world ops as we can safely simulate.
“We are the Red force so we have the mission of protecting our oil rig and our Red homeland from the Blue forces.
“They want to lodge a special forces element on our oil rig and capture our Red island.”
After shaking off the pseudo sub, the Warramunga crew has switched gears and are now actively pursuing their next target.
“As Red forces we’ve successfully fired missiles at some of the Blue ships and we’re now off to hunt down the remaining Blue ship, which happens to be USS Dewey, the American ship,” Commander Phillips says.
Down in the frigate’s command centre, known as the Ops Room, Warramunga’s “XO” Lieutenant Commander Colin Verheul has been playing cat-and-mouse with the Blue Team since 0400.
Just like in a video game, each time his crew is successful in sinking an opposing battleship, it “respawns” and the hunt for Blue October resumes until White Force back on shore names a winner, he explains.
“We pass all of our shots, they pass all of their shots to exercise control (who) determine what damage is sustained,” he says.
“For Blue force to be successful, they need to destroy the oil rig and then force our task group to retrograde to the point where they could have lodged forces onto the island that we’ve captured.
“If by 0400 (tomorrow) we still maintain the island, we haven’t completely lost the oil rig and Blue forces are unable to set conditions to lodge those forces (then we win).”
“We are in front at the moment, we are winning.”
Back up on the bridge, this week’s exercises are a full circle moment for Commander Phillips, who first set foot on the Warramunga in 2002 as a fresh faced 19-year-old midshipman.
“Having visited 65 countries, multiple deployments, it’s really humbling to come back to this very ship 22 years later and be the captain,” he says.
“It really is an adventure and still is, 22 years later, so it’s amazing being back here.”
With an avuncular disposition and ready, boyish smile, it’s easy to imagine the now 41-year-old was a popular appointment to helm the vessel that launched his career.
“It’s a great exercise at all levels that we get something out of this,” he says.
“The ops team are getting practice operating their weapons and their engagement sequences and I’m getting a great first-hand experience with the command challenges of competing priorities and limited resources.
“I’ve got to set which is the most important one thing of the two very important things I’d like to do now.”
But with the Aussies on one side and the US on the other, there was always going to be one question that rose above all others in the following day’s wash-up — did we beat the yanks?
Well we sunk their battleship. Three times.
Feel free to chuck a sickie.
PHOTOS: Behind the Scenes on Exercise Kakadu
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