Australia’s newest military capability, the Amphibious Ready Element (ARE), commanded by the Amphibious Task Group Headquarters and comprising HMAS Canberra, Air Force assets and supported by the Army’s 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and other Army units, has been conducting Exercise SEA EXPLORER, which is the second of the ‘SEA SERIES’ of exercises.
The focus of the exercises is on training and assessing the ARE in a permissive environment scenario which is currently taking place in waters off the North Queensland coast from August through to October.
Captain Jay Bannister Commander Amphibious Task Force said the ARE was in the early stages of the exercise which is the force integration training period.
"There are over 1000 personnel embarked in the ship, including the ship's crew. Since we've been at sea the last couple of days the troops have been undergoing induction training for the embarked forces," CAPT Bannister said.
"We've been making sure they know where they are sleeping and eating and how to make their way to and from those spaces to emergency stations and leaving ship's stations."
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Bassingthwaite Commander Landing Force said his troops would be moving into the procedural execution of getting on and off all of the different platforms they would use within the amphibious environment.
"So this means small craft, landing craft and aircraft as well as doing driver training on and off the landing craft. The next phase of Sea Explorer is to get everybody through those iterations by day and by night," LTCOL Bassingthwaite said.
"After that we then shift to a land-focused procedural activity, which is the land force going through its procedures on the land as part of the mission preparation for the exercise objectives, these being humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and non-combatant evacuation operations."