Battle of the Pacific begins at home as allies flex muscles

For days, the F-35s had been attacking enemy positions up and down Stanage Bay.

For days, the F-35s had been ­attacking enemy positions up and down Stanage Bay, clearing the way for the coalition landing force.

Then wave after wave of US Marine Corps Assault Amphibious Vehicles, trailing columns of white smoke and crowded with heavily armed soldiers, landed ashore yesterday, ready to liberate the fictional country of Legais.

Their objective was to evict the forces of Kamaria, the equally fictitious adversary invented to test the mettle of the 34,000 US, Australian and Japanese personnel participating in Talisman Sabre, the premier US-Australia joint training exercise held every two years.

When the first wave of AAVs clambered up the sand, all signs of resistance had been cleared away.

Amphibious assault craft land on the beaches north of Rockhampton as part of operation Talisman Sabre. Picture: Glenn Hunt

The beach assaults undertaken by an advanced military force bear almost no resemblance to the frenzied dashes of Gallipoli or the slaughterhouse of Omaha Beach, if they’re done right.

There were no shots, no mortars, no enemy snipers dug in on the beach picking off unlucky invaders.

The idea is to gain mastery of what Exercise Director Commodore Allison Norris described as the “amphibious operating area’’, as well as the air above it.

Or as one senior Australian ­officer put it: “We don’t do opposed landings. We tried that in 1915. It didn’t work out so well.”

Behind AAVs, the USS Wasp, HMAS Adelaide and HMAS Canberra kept a watchful eye, guns at the ready.

When the AAVs had landed safely, a second wave arrived.

Australian forces disembark from landing craft. Picture: Peter Wallis

Australian landing craft carrying ASLAVs came in behind the marines, who by now had moved their own formidable-looking vehicles further inland. Overhead, Chinooks carried giant howitzers through the air to set up a gun line to cover the advancing forces as they moved closer towards the enemy and beyond the protective range of the naval guns offshore.

All up, 1000 personnel would pass through the beachhead created by the marines, the Aus­tralians and their allies.

A pre-landing force deployed 48 hours earlier and comprising US, Australian and Japanese special forces met light resistance, before fanning silently inland, feeding vital intelligence about enemy troop locations to their ­colleagues offshore.

Operation Talisman Sabre underway. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Yesterday’s amphibious assault takes Talisman Sabre towards the final phase of its exercise, a sustained land campaign between Team Red, the bad guys, and Team Blue, the ­liberators.

The premise of the exercise is the liberation under a UN mandate of Legais, which was invaded and occupied by Kamaria.

The purpose is for the Americans and the Australians to practise co-ordinated mid-intensity fighting against a sophisticated opponent.

Although mainly a US-Australian venture, Talisman Sabre has grown in recent years to include 18 observer nations from around the Indo-Pacific and, in a measure of how the rise of China is upending the strategic order, Japan, which for the first time has sent a sizeable contingent of its Self Defence Force.

“(The objective is) is to demonstrate to our partners, our would-be partners, and any would-be adversaries the strength of this alliance,’’ US Colonel Matthew Sieber said.

Somewhere beyond the USS Wasp, HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide, a Chinese Type 815G Dongdiao class spy ship dispatched by the People’s Liberation Army watched on.

“This is a free and open Indo-Pacific region,’’ Colonel Sieber said when asked about the ship. “We’re here to do Talisman Sabre and we’re going to continue to do the exercise.’’