General Engineering (GE)
GE section has entered 2024 busier than ever. The end of 2023 saw GE successfully support the certification of the unit’s new Regional Patrol Craft which were
immediately put to use on driver courses to upskill the Battalion. One of these RPC was also deployed on Op RESOLUTE over the Christmas-New Year period. In addition to RPC maintenance, GE provided the main maintenance support for the Battalion’s smaller watercraft used for that operation, managing to keep our people afloat through multiple rotations of Op RESOLUTE. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to support the RPC submarine trial and as you can imagine it was unsuccessful anyway.
LT Daniel Cahill
Electronics, Instruments and Radios (EIR)
During Feb 24 the Battalion’s Electronic Technicians were detached as a part of a Brigade Trial Tiger Team to install communications harnesses in the Land 121 MAN/
Rheinmetall fleet of vehicles. The team travelled to every unit in 1 Brigade conducting the modification within the expected timeframe. We learnt in this trial that having a
dedicated team trained to conduct the modification dramatically reduced the time to complete a fleet wide modification and lead to minimal impact on unit battle rhythms.
SGT Maurice Bromidge
Vehicle Technician
5 RAR TSP vehicle technicians were upskilled on the Supacat High Mobility Transporter (HMT) platform at the back end of 2023. This will allow maintenance support to be provided throughout 1 Brigade when the vehicle platforms come into use. So far the HMT variants have been put through their paces on a Brigade drivers course and
received good feedback from the users. Having multiple variants of the HMT in the Battalion will allow the Companies to utilise further options with movement and operations in the battle space.
SGT Bradley Ewen
