Login
iscover
The Australian Defence Force has successfully completed a live fire exercise against a decommissioned ship with Philippine and United States forces.
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
Create free account to get unlimited news articles and more!
The Philippines, US, and Australian military forces integrated land, sea and air platforms to simultaneously sense, target, strike and destroy the decommissioned ship off the western coast of Northern Luzon on 8 May.
To maximise the training value during the 39th iteration of the annual exercise between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the US military, the goal was to keep the target vessel afloat for as long as possible before ultimately sinking it.
Military forces fired a variety of ordnance at the vessel during the Balikatan training event, such as C-Star (SSM-700K), a Spike NLOS missile, GBU-38 joint direct attack munitions and 2.75-inch advanced precision kill weapons system rockets.
“We know the lethality and capability of our munitions to sink maritime targets,” said US Marine Colonel Douglas Krugman, US director, combined coordination centre (CCC).
“This exercise was about the collective capability of our combined fires networks and increasing interoperability to sense and shoot targets from a variety of Philippine, US and Australian land, sea and air platforms.”
Incorporating as many combined sensing and shooting platforms as possible, the objective of the maritime strike exercise was to test and validate the combined fires networks.
Sensing platforms, like the TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar and the Australian E-7 Wedgetail, relayed data to firing units which then launched ordnance at the target. Integrating sensor networks was a key component of the exercise and allowed coordinated strikes from multiple platforms.
The live fire event was held to evaluate the military combined fires networks, joint and combined interoperability, and state of readiness between the US and Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Participating units included the Philippine Navy’s BRP Jose Rizal (FF-150); the Philippine Air Force’s 7th tactical fighter squadron, flying the FA-50; the US Air Force’s 13th Fighter Squadron, flying F-16 Fighting Falcons; Royal Australian Air Force No. 2 Squadron flying the E-7 Wedgetail; Marine Air Control Squadron-4, 3d Marine Littoral Regiment operating a TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar; Marine Air Control Group 38; 16th Special Operations Squadron, 27th Special Operations Wing, Air Force Special Operations Command, flying the AC-130J Ghostrider, and US Navy VP-10 flying the P-8A Poseidon.
During the maritime strike, the US and AFP led execution from the combined coordination centre on Camp Aguinaldo. The CCC is responsible for integrating combined command and control functions between the US and Philippine joint task forces executing the training.
