Squadron
Leader Alfredo Natesh strolled quietly through the irregular shapes on
the ground. It was getting late and he needed to be sure his precious
technicians were getting their rest, for without them, his mission was
useless. As he reached the end of the hall he silently acknowledged a
sentry doing his utmost to cover the red glare of a cigarette, before
taking a deep breath and heading outside into the cold, moonless
night. Looking to the stars he pondered about the turn of events that
had led to the predicament his group of 20 men now found themselves.
Was his country right in showing those little upstarts across the sea
who really controlled the islands and their vital resources? Would his
men perform as well as they had in today’s simulation when the time
came? Would he be able to contain his fear and excitement at being
finally able to do his job? Was he worthy of the position his people
had placed him in? Sqn-Ldr Natesh smiled. Of course he was and
what’s more with the full support of his fellow Patagonians he could
not fail. The aircraft he would guide towards their targets would
smash what little resistance Ostralis could muster and the countries
would be reunited under the rightful ruling power in no time. He
turned, free of his doubts and drew in a last breath of fresh air
before heading for his stretcher ...
ALMOST three years ago
Australian defence planners were able to finalise and implement an
idea that had been discussed on and off many times.
The regular army was based
around a predominantly light-infantry force, supplemented by a
mechanised battalion and an emerging motorised capability.
These large units required
large amounts of external support to participate on operations and
were really only effective when fighting at their full strength.
Sending a battalion of
troops with their support equipment was a huge task as Somalia
attested.
The army could use 3RAR to
seize key objectives, but like paratroopers the world over, they would
need to be relieved by a heavier force in about 48 hours because once
on the ground, they operated like any other light-infantry force.
And of course a variety of
armoured units were available but the heavy vehicles didn’t fit into
the equation the planners were working on.
Defence planners wanted a
relatively small but highly efficient force that could operate beyond
the capabilities of conventional forces.
For some tasks they could
turn to the realm of special forces but SASR soldiers were already
heavily committed in strategic reconnaissance and counter-terrorist
roles.
That left the commandos,
part-time soldiers who had given years of dedicated service and
developed the fledgling raiding capability in Australia.
It was exactly the
capability Australian defence planners wanted more of — the ability
to strike anywhere with the maximum amount of destruction in the
shortest possible time and with the least amount of casualties before
extracting with minimal external support.
4RAR(Cdo) was created to
meet this need on a full-time basis and for the original soldiers of
Bravo Company the time has finally arrived to expand on the basic
skills they have been practising for more than two years.
OC B Coy Maj Marty Colyer
says the company moved away from individual skills and into collective
training at the end of last year.
"We are now at the
point where collective training is starting to click together
nicely," Maj Colyer says.
"We are now fine tuning
capabilities rather than playing with things that really don’t need
sorting out. We are getting to the point that I’m confident the
company has its collective skills down pat for a number of different
scenarios."
The four-man SAS patrol
slipped silently into the scrub and began its long methodical approach
towards the target area. Soon they would be sending back information
gleaned from a first-hand look at the outskirts of the target but
right now the soldiers were tuned into the surrounding bush and the
secrets it could reveal. Thousands of kilometres away B Coy
soldiers were slinging the last of their bulky equipment onto
transports for the move to a forward operating base. All of their
intensive training could very shortly be called on for real. Public
opinion had swung heavily against the militant Patagonians and their
continual threats of violence towards their nearest neighbours.
Australians were outraged and, unbeknown to most of the public for
reasons of operational security, the government had responded. A team
from Headquarters Australian Theatre had swung into action the moment
the government had asked the CDF to provide possible options and
planning data for the dispute to Australia’s east. The planning
staff had quickly identified a weakness in the Patagonian forces.
Their military air power was superior to that of Ostralis and would
play key a role in any campaign but the pilots depended on accurate
targeting data and airspace control to have any impact. That
information would have to be provided by a specially trained team of
air force personnel operating well forward of friendly positions as a
Forward Air Control Team. Patagonia was known to have only one such
team — a FACT that had recently left its garrison location and had
not been seen since...
Commando skills
need to be constantly revisited in order for the company
group to remain at its peak efficiency.
Going over
techniques until they become second nature has the added
benefit of identifying inherent weaknesses in each operation
and encourages skilled operators to further their
development.
Many of the skills
4RAR(Cdo) has adopted with its new role have been passed on
by other members of Australia’s special-forces group.
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A
group of commandos provide fire support with their Mag 58
and other smallarms during a section attack. Live-fire
practices play an important role in the build-up to a
mission ...
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B Coy’s intensive training
regime has fostered the refinement of those skills.
Maj Colyer says in most
cases the existing SOPs have been excellent and the company has only
had to make slight modifications for strengths and insertion methods.
"We still have a lot of
development to go, particularly in command and control and
deployment-preparedness.
"We’re at a stage now
where we are ready to deploy and conduct operations. Our capabilities
will get smoother and smoother as we go over them more often."
On arrival at a disused
hanger, B Coy quickly set up its operating base and began servicing
equipment that could be required on the upcoming job. The company’s
operations cell began planning possible courses of action from reams
of background information and the first-hand reports slowly filtering
in from the SAS patrol. Before deploying, signal’s intelligence
identified a likely operating area for the Patagonian FACT. They were
inside a huge industrial complex on the edge of the sea gap between
the two islands. SAS patrols were now sending in reports of where the
enemy wasn’t located. For the moment, that information would do the
operations cell nicely. If the enemy was not in a certain place, then
there was little chance of them bumping into the company’s own
tactical reconnaissance teams as they inserted. The commando tac recon
(CTR) teams received warning orders on the afternoon of the
company’s arrival and the section commanders immediately went into a
well-drilled routine of rehearsals, administration and equipment
checks.
A
klepper crew maneuvres its craft during rehearsals for a
sea-borne reconnaissance.
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Final orders were
given and on darkness the CTR teams departed in three
distinct groups. One mixed group of two sniper pairs and a
recon section inserted into a disused quarry by RAPSL from
10,000ft before marrying-up with the SAS patrol. Another
recon section dropped onto the other side of the target by
similar means. The third group of four men launched Klepper
kayaks from a support vessel and began the long paddle
towards the industrial facility under the cover of darkness
...
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One of the key facets of a
commando operation is its hitting power and while surprise,
marksmanship and good battle drills go a long way towards achieving
it, specialist equipment and weapons are essential.
Commandos employ a wide
variety of weaponry to meet any identified need and when coupled with
mission-specific kit and their specialist skills, it is very hard to
mistake them for regular infantry.
Task-orientated is the
catchword among the B Coy soldiers and they apply this maxim to every
piece of kit they own — much of it purchased themselves.
Most of them own about four
different packs, a large Alice pack for parachuting, a small Alice
pack for shorter patrols, a medium waterproof pack for amphibious work
and a smaller body-hugging pack for advanced MOUT operations.
Soldiers who have completed
specialist courses will also have packs they have modified for their
new roles and tasks — lead climbers use a small day pack to carry
cable ladders, mountain warfare exponents have a range of equipment
camouflaged for work above the snowline and members of recon and
snipers use highly modified packs to house the huge loads they endure
in their job.
And that is just the packs.
Nearly every piece of
equipment, apart from their DPCUs, is mission specific — boots,
webbing, rifle slings and even headwear come in different guises for
different tasks.
Maj Colyer estimates that
his soldiers deploy with about four times the equipment than the
normal infantry soldier.
"If you consider a
normal infantry soldier would deploy with his pack, webbing and an
echelon bag if he was lucky, these guys deploy with a trunk on top of
that and we also deploy a very large Q store that has a lot of the
specialist equipment and weapons in it."
Transporting all of this kit
requires a huge logistics effort and Maj Colyer says on the recent
deployment the company loaded truck after truck of trunks for the road
move.
"We are yet to deploy
by air with everybody and the logistics tail — that will be a big
task."
LCpl Andrew McGrath and
his offsider Pte Nathan Ofsofski were in a bind. They both knew the
rest of the company needed to know were the enemy patrols were and
more importantly which building the FACT was operating from but the
countryside was against them. The low saltbush to their right provided
excellent concealment, unless someone stood on them but the enemy knew
that as well and patrols of two or three lightly armed men were
tramping around in the open like hunters flushing quail from the
scrub. To their left was an area of tall timber but it was a
well-maintained plantation. The perfectly aligned trees provided no
concealment at all. As soon as they rounded the first tree to advance
towards the target area they would be spotted. The sniper pair decided
the only thing they could do was to wait for nightfall and hope the
air force personnel they were trying to pinpoint stayed indoors.
Across the water Sgt Darren Hunt and his Klepper-borne team were
having better luck. They had found a sandbar with a patch of mangroves
to lie-up during the day and using their Ninox monoculars they could
paddle into the industrial facility’s harbour by night to plot an
insertion and extraction point for the raiding party. Reminiscent of
the famous Jaywick raiders of WW2, the four men glided quietly past
large cargo and iron ore ships before beaching in a dark secluded
area. According to Sgt Hunt’s map, one of the target buildings was
1700m away — just beyond that first line of warehouses. Back at the
hangar the rest of the company was in full battle-preparation mode.
Final orders were being written, the troops had gone into isolation
from outside elements and rehearsals were in full swing. To an outside
observer the plan was relatively simple; one of the platoons would act
as an amphibious platoon operating the F470 Zodiacs to deliver the
other two platoons to the general target area. On arrival the raiding
platoons would be met by CTR guides and escorted to their separate
target buildings. Synchronised by radio, they would neutralise the
targets, confiscate or destroy sensitive equipment and extract from
the area in the waiting Zodiacs. There was only one hitch really. They
all had to parachute into the middle of the ocean before they could
begin ...
Good information is the key
to a successful raid and unlike a conventional infantry company, a
commando company is well suited to gaining its own first-hand
intelligence.
Each company has a tactical
reconnaissance element who specialise in getting in close to the
target and relaying time-critical information back to operation
planning staff.
Like the rest of the company
the CTR can utilise a wide variety of insertion techniques, a range of
specialist equipment and a good dose of cunning to get the
information.
Maj Colyer says that at
times, the terrain, vegetation and the enemy can prevent the tac recon
elements from getting in as close as they would like and if that is
the case, the raid would usually still proceed.
"If they can’t get as
much information as we need, it really comes down to us just going for
it and hitting the objectives with a short, sharp raid and getting out
of there.
"They can also provide
guides into the objectives and give the commando-task element
concealed approaches to the targets."
‘Brace for impact!’
Sgt Ken Lloyd stared at the RAAF loadmaster in disbelief. Here they
were less than two minutes from dispatching a group of commandos and
their boats and they wanted him to brace for impact. A quick look out
of the Herc’s round window showed the problem. One propeller was
turning gently, its engine dead and fuel streaming from the wing tips.
He had been dispatching long enough to know that with three engines
the Hercules would be approaching its stall speed when it slowed to
release paratroopers. For now it was much safer to return and arc up
the contingency plans. On other aircraft things went much smoother.
Each boat followed by its commando crew exited from the ramp of the
aircraft and descended to the water. The commando’s quickly went to
work, releasing cargo nets with deft strokes of their hook knifes and
inflating the Zodiacs before rafting up and awaiting the arrival of
the main body.
Back at the command centre the
company faced a dilemma. The aircraft that lost an engine
was the same aircraft that was going to drop other personnel
in another pass. B Coy now had soldiers and boats in a small
flotilla on the DZ waiting for a drop that would not be
coming. Using secure long-range communications the flotilla
commander was given orders to meet the rest of the company
at a new insertion point. The raid was to go ahead, albeit
in a somewhat different form.
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An
engine problem on a RAAF Hercules results in a change to
plan B.
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Flexibility is the key to
modern operations and the commandos are among the best exponents of
it.
Despite constant checks and
precautions, the large range of equipment, vehicles and support
elements required to launch a raid can lead to planning nightmares if
items fail at inopportune times.
For this reason several
contingency plans are drawn up to cover every conceivable eventuality
before the raiding force steps off.
In most cases timing is
critical to the success of the mission and something as simple as an
outboard failure could be the difference between a successful swift,
silent and deadly assault or a dismal failure.
For this reason every
essential piece of mission equipment has a backup — Zodiacs are
fitted with two motors, they have two foot pumps to reinflate the
rubber hulls if needed and anyone in the section can operate as
coxswain or bowman.
Maj Colyer says this
planning is a very good selling point for the unit.
"We pride ourselves on
the flexibility side of the house.
"After the aircraft
failed, apart from the four hours we lost in the road move from the
airfield to our next location, we only spent about two hours adjusting
to one of our contingency plans and we still managed to get on with it
that night.
"Getting that raid in
successfully, in darkness and, at a pinch, still being able to provide
one of our force elements for another task if needed, shows just how
much we prepare."
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