Defence

Feature

The invisible ADF

Operation Acolyte—2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games

It didn’t matter where you went in Melbourne in March this year, you had the feeling that a party was brewing. As the clock ticked closer to the starter’s pistol of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, the typically sports-mad Melbourne got a little crazier every day. For 12 days the 2006 Commonwealth Games was the biggest show on earth and sports, celebration and spectacle were the orders of the day—just like it should have been. Graham McBean reports.

Army Reservist Bruce Scott is carried aloft in the Queen’s Chair following his gold medal victory in the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games Full-Bore Rifle Individual competition. At front left is silver medal winner Englishman Parag Patel, while at front right is the bronze medal winner and fellow Australian team member James Corbett. The carrying of the rifle shooting champion in a sedan chair by his fellow competitors is a tradition dating back to 1860.
Photos provided by Public Affairs

Probably the most ‘invisible’ sign of the successful Australian Defence Force (ADF) security contribution to the Melbourne Games was that the party went on without a large military shadow cast across the celebration. The ADF charter always was to leave a small footprint. Yet the ADF had a huge and fundamental responsibility in contributing to a safe, secure and successful games. That the 2500 ADF personnel under the mantle of Joint Task Force 636 (JTF 636) achieved this balancing act with almost perfect synchronicity was a performance worth a gold medal itself.

Commander JTF 636 Brigadier (BRIG) Andrew Smith, who is the present Commander of the Brisbane-based 7th Brigade, said that, while numerous lessons were learnt, most served to reinforce the quality and training of ADF personnel.

‘That is witnessed by the fact that Australia continues to be successful in attracting big events,’ BRIG Smith said.

‘If we weren’t doing the security well in the post-9/11 world we wouldn’t be successful in doing that. Witness the fact that Juan Antonio Samaranch said after the Sydney 2000 Olympics that they were the best games ever and close to the same thing was said about the 2006 games.’

The 2500 tri-service personnel assigned to JTF 636 were structured into 13 separate task groups organised according to the support provided. The Army’s primary tactical effort was centred on the 180- strong Engineer Task Group (ETG) and the 450 members of the Security Task Group (STG). The ETG was assigned the onerous but imperative role of conducting high-risk searches of the athletes’ village and sporting venues. The four company-sized Security Task Units of the STG provided large numbers of boots on the ground for the equally important task of maintaining the integrity of security at vehicle control points and low-risk search tasks at venues. During the games the STG conducted 16 360 vehicle searches alone.

In contrast to the 2000 Olympics, and an unfortunate testimony to the post-9/11 world, was the presence of the Maritime and Air Task Groups. For the first time Royal Australian Air Force FA-18 Hornets were in Australian airspace with a mission. While HMAS Manoora and Warramunga were fortunately not tested in their primary role, the Maritime Task Group was provided with maritime counterinsurgency, ship recovery and defensive counter-air threat capability.

The early morning sun greets Navy Clearance Divers returning from a task at St Kilda Pier. The sailors are assigned to Operation Acolyte, and had been checking the pier prior to the commencement of the women’s triathlon event. At the helm of the Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB) is diving supervisor Leading Seaman Cameron Schmid.
Photos provided by Public Affairs

In more than one way, Operation Acolyte was far from business as usual for ADF operations. To begin with, the ADF found itself in the uncommon role of conducting what BRIG Smith termed as the Domestic Event Support Operation (DESO) as a supporting unit. Essentially, the Commonwealth Games were led by a civilian organisation. While the ADF deployed those skills that military personnel are uniquely trained and equipped to provide, overall control of security rested with the Victoria Police.

Other stakeholders such as the Melbourne 2006 Corporation (M2006) were involved with the running of the games. Essentially, M2006’s primary focus was commercial success. BRIG Smith said this multiplicity of governments, agencies and other entities created a distinct management complexity. To this mix add a large workforce of paid and unpaid staff and the large scale presence of the public in the area of operations, and the complexity becomes even more evident.

Out of this complexity, however, emerged the many critical lessons that JTF 636 learnt. Primary among these was the importance of early engagement and relationship building. The Forward Command Element (FCE) commanded by Colonel Mike Annett deployed about 12 months in advance of the games. The FCE was extremely important in establishing early links with the Victoria Police and M2006; these links would in time develop into an effective working partnership.

These sentiments were echoed at venues where inter-agency relationships were critical. Liaison officer at the athlete’s village, Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Bill Munnee, visited Melbourne in October 2005 with the specific mission to touch base with his counterparts from the Victoria Police and M2006. He then returned in November to attend a police briefing on the conduct of operations at venues. As a Western Australian policeman in his civilian career he also understood the problem from the police perspective. He said ultimately good working relationships meant potential problems between the cultures of different agencies could be defused easily and quickly.

‘There are no secrets with people,’ LTCOL Munnee said. ‘It’s about rubbing shoulders with people and working together as a team. Whether they are civilian police, contract staff, volunteers or M2006—being a colonel or a warrant officer doesn’t mean anything to them. But by dealing with people with respect then any problems that may potentially escalate can be fixed straightaway.’

But even in the best laid plans there are inescapable exceptions. Critical elements such as the ETG and STG could not be deployed in advance. The 180 staff of the ETG were drawn from Townsville- and Darwin-based engineers who were redirected away from their own specific Army training goals to create an ‘ad hoc’ unit, as BRIG Smith characterised them. While existing units such as the Tactical Assault Group and Incident Response Regiment do exist for these roles, they are either too small to deploy on a large task like the games or committed to other equally important tasks.

Meanwhile, a unit’s normal training was put on hold with the subsequent need to make up lost time after the games. In some instances vital equipment not normally held by engineer units arrived two days before it was needed for critical searches. BRIG Smith said a constant concern to him was meeting the tyranny of the starter’s pistol.

‘The thing about a high-end event is that the date of the opening ceremony is set about five or six years in advance and it is not going to slip. If you are not ready on the day, then you are not ready and you are not going to slide the opening ceremony by a week so you can do some more training.

The 2nd/10th Field Regiment Royal Australian Artillery stands fast for the 1812 Overture played by the Combined Services Band, in a special event for the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival, at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne.
Photos provided by Public Affairs

‘We had capabilities that we were bringing to the party that the ADF does not maintain on the shelf in our green role all the time. The technical search capability does not exist at a very large level in the ADF and we had to rebuild it specifically for the games. So we always judge that really finely in terms of the amount of time that is involved in getting additional equipment.

‘You may know exactly what is going to happen but in the lead-up to it your normal day job keeps going on. At some stage you have got to judge and say I am now going to focus on this new job.’

Even so, BRIG Smith was emphatic that the ADF experience of Operation Acolyte was overwhelmingly positive. He recalls a 0200 visit to military personnel at 24-hour vehicle control points at the venues (no doubt to find totally unsurprised soldiers).

‘There were reservists from the four corners of the country enthusiastically doing their job, being attentive and disciplined about what they did. It was fantastic. I thought this is what the ADF does. First and last we are a disciplined force of people who can be relied on.’

He mentions specifically the professionalism and planning of a No. 77 Squadron Hornet patrol and the ‘impressive preparation’ that had gone into planning for the mission. The Air Force also staffed a radar operation near Bacchus Marsh. BRIG Smith said the operation was typical of the way in which everyone involved with JTF 636 was applying their professionalism at disparate roles to get the job done.

BRIG Smith believes, however, that there is still a lot of discussion remaining on how DESO activities should be conducted. He says the lessons learnt from Operation Acolyte are offered as part of the ‘emerging doctrine’ to guide formal doctrine for future operations. On the basis of emerging trends he predicts that Australian agencies will be called on more and more to conduct similar operations, whether a Commonwealth Games, APEC meeting or other task.

‘If we use 9/11 as the threshold point, then prior to that we conducted four major DESO activities, starting with the Melbourne Olympics. That is one about every 11 years. We have done one every one-and-a-quarter years since 9/11 of one sort or another. We need to capture centrally all of that expertise and experience and identify people who have that experience so we can call on them again.

‘Generally, we need to get a lot more deliberate and methodical about it rather than ad hoc. We do ad hoc fairly well but we can make things a lot less painful for ourselves if we now start to expect that it will occur, and plan and allow for it the way we do every other operation.’

The ‘ad hoc’ in particular is a point that BRIG Smith constantly revisits. He said that redirecting warfighting force elements to create a unit was not ideal. But he acknowledged that keeping ‘100 technical searchers on the shelf’ was not necessarily cost-effective. He said it may well be that a non-ADF federal agency is the best solution.

‘What we need to decide as a country is whether this is a job for the ADF because some of the things we were doing are not things for which we have “green” roles. What we were doing was helping civilian agencies—not just the police but others—to surge for a short period of time to a higher level of capability they didn’t normally have, and that was found to be cost-effective when you have an event every five years.

‘But we are doing these things more often now. Perhaps what we need to decide as a country is whether this is a job for the ADF or should we now migrate some of that capability somewhere else … It may well be that, after we have gone through a proper examination, the most cost-effective method of conducting security for DESO activities remains with the ADF—but I don’t think we have been through that process yet.’

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