Gurkha Tank Battle – Messing Around on Salisbury Plain

These events took place during an Afghanistan mission rehearsal exercise (MRX) a couple of years ago and was written soon afterwards. All places mentioned were not actually in Helmand Province, but were stand-ins on Salisbury Plain (‘Helmandshire’ if you will). After acting as embedded media for 10 days, it was only on the last that I got near the action.

Finally, after what seems like weeks of waiting, I get the chance to join a unit going out on a mission. I meet up with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles or 2RGR at their camp at Musa Q’Aleh in Helmand Province. My escort is a petite blonde captain in her late 20s, known to all the Gurkhas as just ‘Emily’. Her primary job is education officer, but she also doubles as unit press officer or UPO for 2RGR. She speaks Nepali and teaches English to the Gurkhas. She is the only woman among 700 men.  In her spare time she does 24-hour mountain bike races for fun.

Emily asks another officer how close will I be allowed to the action. She is told: “He can go as far forward as you do”. We will be part of a reserve platoon, following behind the actual strike force. Not far behind, though, as it turns out.

The pre-mission brief takes place at 8PM in the battle-group’s command centre. Officers from all the main units at Musa Q’aleh sit or stand around a big table. Brigade headquarters listens in via a radio link. The different sections – intelligence, artillery, forward air control and so on, say their pieces. The various incidents of shootings, rocket attacks and so on in the last 12 hours are outlined. There has been a drive-by shooting at a forward operating base or FOB. Nine mortar rounds landed inside another FOB and a patrol was fired on. A local police station has received a threatening ‘night letter’ warning that locals should not join or help ISAF and should take their children out of school. Most relevant to us is that the source of much of this trouble has been identified and tracked down to a location known as Prendegast Wood. Observed by a Gurkha reconnaissance squad, who have been hiding nearby for over a week, sentries have been seen and a vehicle has noted coming and going from the woods. The force I will be joining is to go and sort them out, and recover a suspected weapons cache. A last-minute update comes in – a van has dropped a further five suspected enemy at the wood. Actually, the word enemy isn’t used. The colonel in charge prefers AOF, which stands for armed opposition forces. The meeting breaks up and the officers go to brief their own men.

The plan, Emily tells me, is to move out in a convoy to FOB Edinburgh, have a final brief and a rock drill, where the squad leaders practice their locations and timings for the assault on a large-scale map laid out on the floor. From there we will head to a line of departure where we will meet the ‘Kandaks’ (the name for an Afghan army battalion) and their vehicles, expected to be Viking tracked personnel carriers. We head out to where the convoy, consisting of about a dozen Pinzgauer light trucks and Land Rovers, is lined up, engines idling and stow our gear.

The officer leading the convoy isn’t too happy at the size of this “train set” as he calls it. By the time the ANA are expected to join us, “we’ll be about 400 metres long by then” he says. There is a chance that a guided rocket strike will be called in on the target before we arrive, and if so, there won’t be much to do except to pick up the pieces, which will destroy the arms cache and the “exploitation value” of it. We are in the second vehicle, a Pinzgauer with a Gurkha driver and gunner. In the back are Emily, myself and two soldiers from the Estonian Army, here as observers. If there weren’t two of them, one might be forgiven for thinking that the larger of them was the Estonian Army, so much gear is he carrying. He says he visited Stonehenge this week, and I suspect he might be taking substantial parts of it back to Tallinn with him in the copious pouches attached to his webbing. A last minute decision to leave behind 30 helmets in plastic bags that we had aboard seems to suddenly make room for us all without anyone having to sit on anyone else’s lap. I sense the disappointment of the Estonian next to Emily.

Just after sunset we set off, down roads at first then across open country. Forty minutes later we stop in a large open field that slopes away gently to our right and get out of the wagons. The transports are arranged in an arc at a distance around the command vehicles. The squat silhouettes of Warrior fighting vehicles of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment (PWRR) stand sentinel on our flanks, their cannon pointed ahead of us toward the woods from which bad things have come. The afterglow from the sun is now just a bruise on the horizon.

As the last light fades, the vehicles dotted around us soon become indistinct black shapes like sleeping cattle. I recognise a short but tough looking EOD engineer from yesterday, when we both flew on a Chinook helicopter for a medical response mission to pick up an injured Gurkha. He was as interested in what I do as I was in his job, which mainly seemed to involve being the first out of the helicopter clearing bombs and mines so the injured could be rescued. If the helicopter can’t land, he will rescue the wounded himself while dangling from a rope. He asked me if we journalists were issued with a personal weapon. I was just about to tell him all the reasons why that would be a bad idea when our helicopter arrived and we had to break off the conversation. My flight time on the Chinook yesterday had been only 15 minutes from base to casualty to base, but he tells me he spent seven hours on it, which is enough for a lifetime, he thinks.

Emily comes over. “We are going to stay here until H-hour.”

- “We’re stopping in a barn and all of that?” I ask.

- “No. We may still get called out for a couple of things, this and that. I guess we will just wait for everything to kick off, I think. Everything’s in position, I think, but I get the feeling that it won’t be a standard night. I recommend you get your head down. If you want to lie down by the vehicle, feel absolutely free to do so, but if you can sleep sitting up I recommend doing that in the vehicle”.

A few yards away, two officers are discussing why we have stopped here rather than gone to FOB Edinburgh and then attacked under cover of darkness.

“It’s only because you guys don’t want to clear a fucking wood in the night time!” Says one.

“I can’t believe we are waiting here for fucking five hours!” Says the second officer, laughing.

“The thing about waiting here is that no-one can get in and no-one can get out.”

Emily asks them what has happened to the original plan.

“The plan at FOB Edinburgh changed…” says the first officer “…because recce – the legends that they are – identified eight people inside the objective, laying a command wire IED now. So we said, roger, ok, let’s get ROE [the rules of engagement] to do something about it. That was granted but then we said fuck it, if we drop something on them now then we won’t be able to recover the weapons cache. So we said let’s go in, secure it. We know there’s only eight in there now. It can only get worse in terms of more and more enemy coming in. So we thought put a cordon around it now, no-one can come in or out. (At) first light the ANA can come down, shout at them a bit, tell them to put down their guns because they are hopelessly outnumbered. No bloodshed, clearance of the cache, big thumbs up all round, thank you very much.”

“Very good.” says the second officer. “I wouldn’t mind going in and smashing it all up, though.”

The moonless July night is so still and mild that I choose to lay down on just a roll mat under the stars. Sleep doesn’t come easy. First there is the anticipation of what might happen on tomorrow’s mission, which will be my first time in a combat environment, then an RAF Typhoon arrives high overhead, turning and climbing, diving and wheeling. I try to ignore it at first, in the interests of getting as much kip as I can, but then give in and lie back to watch it thread its way through the Milky Way, its wingtip lights adding two blinking red and green stars to the cosmos.

Eventually it goes away, but then a Warrior starts up to our left, its engine throbbing in the distance. At midnight, what I take to be Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles grind past our trucks. Uncertain that they are as aware of our prone bodies as we are of them, most of us sit up to give them a chance to not squash us under their tracks.

Finally, I get some sleep. The temperature has dropped enough to warrant digging out the sleeping bag. With five layers on my upper body, including body armour, but only a fairly thin pair of trousers, my knees are starting to feel the cold.

WOOOSSH! I am awoken from drooling sleep at 2AM by the hiss of a rocket speeding overhead. For a moment I think the guided rocket strike has happened, but as I fall out of my sleeping bag, it appears to be only an orange flare, bursting over the woods. Whatever it is, I’m sure it means I might find myself alone in a field if I don’t get my stuff together. I get my boots on and sleeping bag packed away in record time, I am approached by a soldier who is just an outline against the descending flare light, but sounds like he hails from somewhere on the Mersey.

“Are you the one doing the filming?” he asks, as another flare pops behind him.

- “…ahh…” I say, wondering if the focussing light on my camcorder might have given away our position earlier. ‘…not at the moment, no”.

“The attack is still supposed to go in at first light. We won’t necessarily be moving out right away”.

- “So it’s not guys preparing to attack us from the trees then?”

He considers this thought. “Errrm… it might be”.

Nothing comes our way, however and the flares continue to fly and fall, sometimes two, three or four at a time. For the next two hours or more, there seems to always be one yellow light falling gently in the distance, or in a couple of occasions dropping right overhead, lighting us all up. Mostly it has the feel of a somewhat cut-rate Bonfire Night display, but as some of the flares descend on their parachutes into the forest, their fall triggers flickering patterns through the trees and an eerie glow as they hang in the branches. It must be terrifying in there, and later I am told that the intention of this spectacle is to deny the enemy sleep and confuse him of our intentions. It certainly worked for me.

Some of the soldiers manage to stay asleep through all of this, except on a couple of occasions when another on guard duty or ‘stag’ trips over the dark cocoons of their sleeping bags, something which makes me chuckle with each grunt and ‘sorry!’ I have unintentionally avoided being stumbled over by bringing a pale blue roll mat that reflects light like a police beacon.  Deciding that being kicked is a lesser discomfort than getting us all killed, I make a mental note to look for a green one before next time.

To be Continued...

If it's Thursday, it must be war

Thursday morning, and the Wallian crisis has tipped into outright warfare. Joint Warrior 10-02 has moved into the operations phase. We have switched sides and our Falcon is now simulating a Dragonian Sukhoi Su-24 ‘Fencer’ armed with AS-17B ‘Krypton’ air-to-surface missiles for an attack on the carrier Ark Royal and other ships of Caledonia’s task force.

The ‘Fencer’s radar is simulated by NATO-supplied electronic warfare pods, fitted alongside Cobham’s own jammers. Our ‘missile’ is actually a BAe Hawk trainer, flown by Marcus of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Requirements and Development Unit (FRADU), who joins us as we pop out of the cloud that covers all of Scotland and hangs tightly off our wing as we descend over the Minch, the strait that separates the Outer and Inner Hebrides.

After a low-level run we climb to 1500 feet, the Hawk tucked in close alongside. We paint a target with the NATO pod, simulating the ‘Slot Back’ radar of the Su-24.

“Launch Marcus” calls Caroline the Falcon’s pilot, waving her hand forward. The Hawk banks vertically, rolls inverted and dives for the deck out of sight.

We pull a 1.4g turn away onto a reciprocal heading, jamming behind us as we go, before turning back towards the carrier. When Marcus calls an estimated five miles to run, EW operator Mal turns on the simulated missile head and transmits it at the target. The Hawk itself has no radar or weapons, but we can provide a fair simulation for the ships’ defensive systems operators. The Hawk is authorised to overfly the carrier at 100 feet, but today there are issues with helicopters, including the Apaches that ‘Ark’ is carrying, operating below 500 feet near the ships. With the cloud level at 1700 feet and hanging lower in places, we don’t see many warships ourselves.

Marcus rejoins us at another predetermined gate for a launch at the Greek frigate Themistocles. This time we are too low for the inverted dive, so he accelerates away on the level at our signal. Again we paint, jam, turn, reverse and illuminate, and repeat the process once more before the Hawk leaves us for good.

Our last task is a run on the Dutch frigate De Zeven Provincien, a very modern ship with a sophisticated 3D radar system. We are joined for this by ‘Starbeam’, Tony, George and Ted in the other Falcon, which has mainly been stand-off jamming so far. We launch them off our starboard wing then become a missile ourselves. Restricted by helo activity to 1,000 feet, we are an easy target for DCA, - defensive counter-air – a Royal Navy Hawk on combat air patrol playing the part of one of the fighters ‘Ark’ used to have, but despite technically being blown out of the sky, we press on. Passing the tiny Shiant Islands, I glimpse Ark Royal, two Apaches and a Lynx. On the other side we catch the Dutch frigate in a cluster of four ships, which start turning hard to evade us and to present clear arcs for their anti-aircraft weapons. “There’s the Turk” calls Caroline as we pass abeam the Babaros, helpfully flying a large national flag. De Zeven stands out with its paler paint and straighter lines and we zoom over her from stern to stem. “A good catch”.

 I don’t know if we ‘hit’ Ark Royal, but a week later the UK government’s spending review got her, with a ceasing of operations with almost immediate effect. Her regular complement of Harriers followed soon after and RAF Kinloss closed for flying in July 2011.

Ashes to Ashes

Note: A version of this appeared in New Zealand Aviation News, June 2010.

On my 2010 visit from the UK back to New Zealand I had managed to visit every RNZAF flying unit, meet every commanding officer and see every aircraft type – except No 5 Squadron and the P-3K Orion. The chance to remedy that came up with the visit of Orion NZ2406 and a 54-person detachment to the UK to take part in Exercise Joint Warrior 101, a bi-annual, UK led NATO exercise held in Scottish waters and airspace. In addition to ships from ten NATO nations and Brazil, maritime patrol aircraft (MPAs) from the USA, Canada, France, and Italy as well as New Zealand were involved, operating from RAF Kinloss, to the east of Inverness on the Moray Firth.

So with a invitation to visit from 5 Squadron’s CO, Wing Commander Nick Olney, I organised a trip up from London to visit the detachment as the fortnight-long exercise entered its second week.

However, neither I, the squadron, the Royal Air Force or Joint Warrior’s exercise control staff had anticipated the insidious effects of an invisible cloud, drifting from an unpronounceable mountain 1600 km away in Iceland.

The disruption caused by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano to civil aviation in the UK and Europe began on Thursday, 16 April, with progressive closure of airspace and suspending of radar service, allowing VFR flying only.

Military flying initially seemed less affected, but the ash soon began to impact Joint Warrior and the concurrent Brilliant Mariner exercise in Germany and Denmark, and one aircraft spotters’ website reported on 17 April that the Canadian and Kiwi P-3s were no longer at Kinloss (but that RNZAF crew had been seen in Forres Tesco’s), so the following morning as I prepared to catch the train to Inverness, a message from Wing Commander Olney that read: “The P-3 and one crew have now departed the UK and are not returning”, was not a huge surprise, although somewhat of a disappointment. As Olney told me when we met the following day, he was given warning of an ash-free corridor to the west at 9AM Saturday, rounded up the crew (who weren’t all on base) by 10AM and set the detachment to packing and planning a departure in the short time window that was forecast. NZ2406 was airborne at 3.30PM. A Canadian CP-140 Aurora also slipped out, but three USN P-3s and three French Atlantics remained stranded for several more days. “Mobilising (the crew and aircraft) was the smartest thing in the world at the time” said Olney.

The whole detachment included two crews, two operations officers and approximately 17 maintainers. All but the crew aboard ’06 were due make their way home to New Zealand via various commercial airlines over the following week as there was no 757 or C-130 support allocated. As of 19 April, a timely return to work at Whenuapai wasn’t looking to be a certainty.

NZ4206 had reached Kinloss by flying westabout via Perth, Mahé in the Seychelles, Dubai and Sigonella in Italy. The planned return journey would have partly reversed those steps, with a diversion via Butterworth in Malaysia for Exercise Bersama Shield starting on 26 April. The training value of two exercises in one trip was one of the driving forces behind 5 Squadron’s epic journey.

But in the immortal words of the Newcastle Song: ‘Don’t you ever let a chance go by’, and the P-3 pulled out when there was a break in the traffic, so to speak, albeit headed in the opposite direction. Last heard of by me trying to get out of CFB Greenwood ahead of a snowstorm, the P-3 would make Malaysia, but only by flying around the world, and then some.

With no aircraft to fly and all fixed-wing flying forbidden by the RAF’s Air Command, the air element of Joint Warrior came to an end several days ahead of schedule. HMS Ark Royal had already disembarked her Harriers ashore and was put on standby to rescue British citizens stranded at European ports. The remaining 5 Sqn personnel occupied themselves with seminars and workshops on anti-submarine techniques and equipment, and talking to the likes of me.

As for the exercise itself, In the four days of Joint Warrior, before it came to a premature end, 5 Squadron managed to fly five sorties, logging 27 hours of a planned total of 110. “It’s quite a big commitment to send two crews and an aircraft around the world, but it’s such good training” says P-3 pilot Flight Lieutenant Aaron Benton. Having flown a night low-level sortie; “We were ready for the next one then the cloud showed up. After that it was waiting and waiting until JTEPS [the Joint Tactical Exercise Planning Staff] cancelled everything”.

These two-week exercises are usually divided into two phases. In the first week, known as the ‘set-fit’ phase, the various forces practice integrating their procedures and testing their systems against a background of a fictional crisis involving two or more nations and a UN/NATO intervention (Dragonia and Caledonia have been fighting inconclusively over Avalon for several years now). The scenario really only kicks in during the second week, when tensions and shadow boxing inevitably boil over into conflict. Supporting all this is a massive organisation based in Faslane near Glasgow, Northwood near London and elsewhere, incorporating all aspects of modern war, not just the armed forces, with legal and political advisors and players representing insurgent groups, aid organizations and the media. The latter, usually civilian contractors, provide radio, TV and print output as ‘Simpress’ during the exercise, contributing to the scenario’s realism.

“The exercise was looking really good.” Says Benton. “We few a few sorties against US, UK and French subs and with Belgian and RN surface ships. In the set fit phase we go out and work with a surface unit of 2-3 ships and their helos and protect them from a submarine, so we don’t use the scenario, but it is excellent training – you know something’s going to happen in those few hours. In the [second week’s] Ops phase you don’t know what will happen, but you get into exercise ROE (rules of engagement) and so on, so it’s good to have both weeks”. Another exercise feature is a “Sim Guard” radio frequency where, for example, a Dragonian warship may warn off a Coalition aircraft, which may reply that it is complying with the rules of the air. This keeps the real Guard free for warning off Russian spy ships, which are known to appear in the middle of manoeuvres, just like the Cold War days.

In order to get the best training value, A Joint Warrior sortie might be combined with some overland ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) on the extensive target ranges at Spadeadam, Cumbria. ISR is a role that has become increasingly important in recent years and to which Orions are particularly suited. “The RNZAF has not done any operational ISR tasking, but it is a role that we are taking on.” Says Aaron Benton. The P-3K2 upgrade will have more ISR capabilities, and when fully in service the RNZAF’s Maritime Patrol Force (MPF) will be renamed the Airborne Surveillance and Response Force (ASRF). “The combination of sensors on the K2 will make the aeroplane a very capable surveillance platform.” Says Nick Olney. “One of my boasts is that we will have the best MPA in the world when the K2 turns up*. It will give quite phenomenal value for money to the New Zealand taxpayer.”

After the overland ISR portion, the P-3 might continue into the Minch (the channel between the Scottish mainland and the Western Isles) for tasked ASW work. For this, 5 Squadron brings its own sonabuoys, which are a different size from that used in the UK. Live bombs and torpedoes are not transported to the UK as their employment can be simulated. Submarines themselves can be simulated with devices like the EMATT, (Expendable Mobile ASW Training Target), but in Joint Warrior real conventional and nuclear submarines are available. The ‘nukes’ are traditionally easier to detect, because of the constant noise source of the coolant pumps for the reactor, but newer subs such as the Royal Navy’s HMS Astute, which was undergoing trials during Joint Warrior are said to be much quieter.

“In the last 10 years we have taken the Joint Warrior invite when we can” says Nick Olney. The exercise was known as the Joint Maritime Course (JMC) up to 2005 and Neptune Warrior from 2006-2007. “For some guys Joint Warrior is their first major exercise”. Part of the learning curve is, surprisingly, understanding the locals: “Sometimes it takes a while for our new guys to understand the Scottish controllers” says Aaron Benton. One of his younger squadronmates who had been at Faslane agreed it was the same there, with “the mess stewards talking Glaswegian at three words a second.”

Participation by 5 Squadron in the next Joint Warrior, JW102 in October is a possibility**. Hopefully next time Icelandic ash will not take an airborne role in the scenario***.

*At the time he added that he didn’t know if he should be saying that at a (future) Nimrod MRA.4 base, but as that programme was scrapped in late 2010, he needn’t have worried.

** They didn’t return, needing to concentrate on the introduction of the P-3K2 while also having fewer aircraft available.

*** It didn’t.