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Sea Lion partnership building ADF strength
By Michael Brooke

Volume 50, No.3, March 8, 2007
 
WET, WET, WET:
Clockwise from top left: PTE Ray Mathewson of No. 35 Water Transport Squadron signals to an LCM8 as it approaches for a stern door marriage with HMAS Kanimbla.
Photo: ABPH Andrew Dakin
 
HMAS Brunei (foreground), HMAS Labuan and HMAS Wewak depart Townsville for the exercise.
Photo: ABPH Andrew Dakin
 
A LARC is loaded onto the tank deck of HMAS Kanimbla.
Photo: ABPH Andrew Dakin
 
Sea-savvy Sailors and land-lubbing soldiers joined forces recently for Ex- ercise Sea Lion, an annual training activity that has come to symbolise the growing synergy between the Army and the RAN in the development of the ADF’s amphibious warfare capability.

Ex Sea Lion 07 was a joint RAN/Army exercise conducted in the vicinity of the Palm Islands during February 19-23, the success of which has helped pave the way for more advanced training activities in the future.

The RAN assets involved in Ex Sea Lion included the Landing Platform Amphibious HMAS Kanimbla (CMDR Jay Bannister) and the Landing Craft Heavy (LCH) HMA Ships Brunei (LEUT Scott Dixon), Labuan (LEUT Paul Uhkoff) and Wewak (LEUT Scott Flynn), which supported various Army units including Black Hawk helicopters, LCM8s and LARCs (Army duks).

COMFLOT CDRE Peter Lockwood said Sea Lion 07 enhanced the interoperability of the ADF to conduct joint and tri-service operations in the littoral environment. “Sea Lion is an important building block that enables us to progress to more advanced amphibious exercises and even operations that will be conducted in partnership with a US-led maritime coalition,” he said.

COMFLOT told Navy News that Sea Lion provided the ADF with important lessons that would be validated at Ex Talisman Sabre which also involves the US Navy and US Marine Corp, and then incorporated into our evolving amphibious warfare doctrine.

“Amphibious capability is fundamental to the ADF, particularly in the countdown to our greater capacity for expeditionary warfare with the Canberra Class Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ships coming on-line in the near future.”

Commander Amphibious Task Group CAPT Keith Laver said Ex Sea Lion would help the ADF “marshal a landing force and project it into shore, so that we can respond adequately to whatever emergency is at hand.”

Sea Lion provided the Navy and the Army with the opportunity to work together on the procedures involved in all phases of amphibious operations, including planning, force integration, assault and withdrawal/redeployment.

The force integration phase involved Kanimbla conducting stern-door marriages with the three Landing Craft and two LCM8s. These are essential steps to getting Army equipment and vehicles on the landing craft for the beach assault phase.

Kanimbla’s stern-door marriages with the LHCs were not only important for the soldiers involved, but the crews of the Brunei-Class landing craft as this was part of their Mission Readiness Evaluation and Work-up.

Commanding Officer 2 RAR, LTCOL James said, “We learnt quite a lot from working with the Navy, particularly load planning and moving LARCs [Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo], plant equipment and jeeps onto landing craft for the assault phase.”