|
|
|
|
 |
||
 |
| |
||||||||||||
Engineers in armour |
||||||||||||
As a misty dawn broke on February 26, a convoy of armoured plant vehicles left the Australian forward operating base and, in the process, made Australian Army history. It was the first time Australian engineers had taken delivery of and deployed a fleet of armoured plant vehicles while on operation. Their first mission was the construction of a gabion wall, a concrete pad and the refurbishment of the mosque in the village of Talani on the outskirts of Tarin Kowt. Lt Adam Tull, the senior engineer assigned to the task, said the mission represented a number of achievements for 1RTF. “To successfully transport this type of equipment given the road conditions in this part of Afghanistan, and to incorporate so many different plant vehicles and other engineering assets on a mission was really satisfying,” Lt Tull said. “The fact we also contributed to an important and meaningful project that the locals had started was a great feeling. This was easily the most complex an ambitious engineer mission to date.” He said the opportunity he had to contribute to the success of the task force had taught him “a lot about Army engineering and its capacity to aid in the rebuilding of countries damaged by natural disaster or conflict”. The armoured plant equipment came about because of the recognition that, owing to the potentially high-threat environment facing the task force, all vehicles operating on missions outside the wire would need to be armoured. The first hurdle was identifying the type of plant equipment that would allow 1RTF to conduct tasks in such a complex and formidable region as Afghanistan. Sgt Bryan Hunt, 1CER, identified a number of different types of plant vehicles that would allow some flexibility in tasking and could be transported on very poor roads. These were a skid-steer loader (Bobcat), a 13-tonne excavator, an LX100 front-end loader, a D5 dozer and a CP5 roller. All of these plant vehicles would be transported to job sites on 20-tonne trailers towed behind armoured Mack dump trucks. In June 2006, a series of trials were held in Darwin involving plant operators from 1RTF and personnel from DMO and Australian Defence Industries (ADI). Sgt Hunt and his plant operators set about dealing with the potential visibility problems of armoured plant vehicles. Cardboard cut-outs were placed in the vehicle windows to simulate armoured plates, which gave the operators an appreciation of the visibility once the vehicles were armoured. Once satisfied that a solution had been made, the vehicles were taken to a DMO Engineer Systems Program Office for construction. During pre-deployment training last year, 1RTF’s Articifer Sgt Maj, WO1 Chris Carroll, Sgt Hunt and a team from 1CER workshops travelled to ADI in Bendigo to assess the armouring process, maintenance procedures and the survivability of the final design. When 1RTF began its deployment to Afghanistan in August 2006, the task force’s plant operators used available plant equipment from their Dutch partners in Task Force Uruzgan. The armoured skid-steer loader arrived in January and plant operators began immediate training on the vehicle. They were impressed by the useability of the equipment considering the 1.5-tonnes of armour and reduced visibility for the operator. Then the other plant vehicles and Mack dumps arrived in the MEAO after being delivered to the region by HMAS Tobruk. The large vehicles were then flown into Afghanistan and delivered to 1RTF in Tarin Kowt by US C-17s. |
