Who Better to Forge a Path?
It wasn’t long ago that the CO, 1st Armoured Regiment, asked: “who better to forge a path through these new challenges [presented by the impact of emerging technology] than Army’s mounted experts in the 1st Armoured Regiment?”
‘Who better? The answer is easy. Any unit that doesn’t necessitate the AFVs being stripped from any of Australia’s three armoured regiments.
As it happened, 1 Armd Regt won the prize, was stripped of its tanks, and is now the Combat Experimentation Group (CXG). The consequence for the RAAC?
2 Cavalry Regt was compelled to become a dual-role tank and cav unit, having to juggle two squadrons of each. Rather than 3 Brigade (Townsville) being a full armoured brigade, as designated by the Defence Strategic Review (DSR), it is left without a tank sqn, a cav sqn and a battle-group HQ.
A further consequence for the RAAC is that it must forego the experience and promotional opportunities that these sub-units and HQ would provide. Twenty-five percent of the former RAAC has been sacrificed to provide the CA with a test-bed for new technologies (or was he pressured by Defence).
Who better? Well may you ask.
Of course, it didn’t just happen … there was a great deal of consideration behind 1 Armd Regt being chosen for the ‘prize’. A lot of the planning and decision making was done behind closed doors. Some senior RAAC officers were privy to the thinking of the inner-circle; many were not.
The psychology was very carefully thought through. 1 Armd Regt was praised for being chosen for the new role, the importance of which was stressed by everyone from the CA down. Indeed, the CA has boasted that “We just stood up, based on the 1st Armoured Regiment, [a] tech-scale battle group. That’s our way of fast-tracking the application of new and emerging technology and then exploiting it across the rest of the army”.
Following the Armoured Cavalry Regiment (Plan Beersheba) ‘trial’, 1 Armd Regt returned to its 68-year-old role as Australia’s only tank regiment. This was a posting eagerly sought by all those who had joined the RAAC to “to locate, identify, capture, and destroy the enemy, by day or night, in combination with other arms, using fire and manoeuvre”.
The DSR specified that 3 Brigade in Townsville would be an armoured brigade. In order to provide the tank regiment, cavalry regiment and mechanised infantry battalion that make up an armoured brigade, 1 Armoured Regiment would have to move north. The fact that this was never going to happen was all part of the DSR planning. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s four squadron structure was pre-planned with the brigade commander, who would ‘make do’ with what was still a very capable, albeit under-strength, armoured brigade.
The CO, 1 Armd Regt, further stated that “The RSM and I are committed to upholding the customs and traditions of the Regiment”. This, once again, is part of the psychological planning in which the impression is that everything goes on as if 1 Armd Regt was still a tank regiment. The CDF expects that the unit will retain the Standard, though there’s no entitlement for a non-combatant to do so.
The customs and traditions of the Regiment are those forged in battle. A unit without tanks is a unit without the bonds formed by tank crews; bonds which reach into all parts of the unit and make it unique.
The CXG can never be the same as 1 Armd Regt, nor stand in its footprints; the sooner this is accepted, the better the RAAC will be.
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Cameron, MC, RAAC (Ret’d)
FILE PHOTO (March 2024): An Australian Army trooper from the 1st Armoured Regiment remotely controls a weapon system on an optionally crewed armoured vehicle during a demonstration in Puckapunyal, Victoria. Photo by Sergeant Tristan Kennedy.
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