Integrated long-range logistics
The integrated logistics necessary to undertake combined Australian-US land-based Long Range Fires have been tested and improved following Exercise Operose 2024.
Led by the ADF’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, the bilateral activity allowed US Army Pacific specialists to work with their Australian counterparts in developing and confirming their interoperability in providing rapid theatre-level logistical deployment of Long Range Fire assets from logistic Australian nodes.
Operose built on the success of Exercise High Ball 2023, where the two partners developed their interoperability in conducting land-based Long Range Fires by using Australian data to enable a US HIMARS launcher to engage a maritime target off the Western Australia coast.
US Army Major General Gavin Gardner, Commander 8th Theater Sustainment Command, said every opportunity to rehearse logistics with the ADF was an opportunity to build combined readiness.
“Exercise Operose achieves that aim by allowing us to test our logistics networks that span across the vastness of Australia,” Major General Gardner said.
“Regardless of how sound a plan is, it often takes moving equipment to identify friction points for sustainment.
“Whether it’s at a point of entry, such as airports or seaports, or testing different modes of transportation, there are always opportunities to learn and improve.
“Operose is a valuable training exercise to ensure we are operationally integrated to support manoeuvre and fires in support of the ADF.”
Being a period of the year when Australian and US exercises are at their highest level, Operose participants were able to learn from other theatre logistics activities underway, such as the recent air and rail movement of US armoured vehicles and equipment from California to Darwin via Adelaide.
Conducted by the US Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, Rapid Deployment Exercise 24 swiftly deployed personnel and several LAV-25 armoured reconnaissance vehicles by US strategic airlift to RAAF Base Edinburgh. The vehicles then moved north via commercial rail operations.
The Operose participants also considered options that directly relate to 8th Theater Sustainment Command’s own assets in Australia, which reduce the need to move as many vehicles to Australia.
Building on a combined Australian-US logistics relationship reaching back to World War 2, 8th Theater Sustainment Command now has three company’s worth of vehicles and containers pre-positioned at Bandiana, Victoria.
The American vehicles are stored under the Australian-US Combined Logistics, Sustainment and Maintenance Enterprise (CoLSME) Force Posture Initiative, which is a result of a joint statement issued following the Australian United States Ministerial meeting in 2023.
Lieutenant Colonel James Sowerby, CoLSME Project Officer for Joint Logistics Command (JLC), said Exercise Operose provided an opportunity to test and improve how the US vehicles can be rapidly mobilised from storage.
“The US vehicles we are maintaining came into storage following Exercise Talisman Sabre 23, and were not expected to go out again until Talisman Sabre 25,” he said.
“Operose required JLC and 8TSC (8th Theater Sustainment Command) to rapidly activate a US Army M1075 Palletised Load System vehicle and a forklift truck for movement to Darwin to support land-based LRF (Long Range Fires).
“Our processes for rapid activation were quickly resolved, and the vehicles were prepared and sent.
“The end result showed that our combined investment in integrated logistics can be used dynamically to meet a range of contingencies.”
Defence image Australian Army personnel, rail workers and US Marines load US LAV-25 armoured reconnaissance vehicles onto a freight train in Adelaide for rail movement to Darwin for REDEX, the U.S. Marine rapid intra-theatre movement exercise, which first involved the movement of the vehicles from California to RAAF Edinburgh via U.S. strategic airlift aircraft. The loading was observed by Exercise OPEROSE personnel as an option for moving heavy vehicles rapidly to Australia from the U.S. West Coast.
