UK Exercise
Exercise HEAVY ANVIL Scribe: 2Lt Hannah Glaister
Daytime Navigation and Convoy Practise
O
n 15 March 21, 3 Armoured Company, 6 Armoured Close Support Battalion, deployed on Exercise HEAVY ANVIL to the Salisbury Plain Training Area. The initial deployment consisted of three packets, all heading to Old Carter Barracks: Fwd X led by Lt J Oliver, Fwd Y led by 2Lt H Glaister, and finally HQ. This move allowed for the initial navigation and C2 testing to see where the Company sat before moving onto the training phase of the Exercise. Once each packet had arrived at Old Carter Barracks and was set up in Platoon and HQ locations, the Reception, Staging, Onward Movement and Integration (RSOI) section of the Exercise began. The RSOI package allowed the Company to slowly build up their knowledge of several integral parts of deployment while keeping inline with the new CSS BCS CTOs that the Company was lucky enough to trial. These consisted of the use of night sights while both on foot and while vehicle based, the role of a Command Post (CP) in a
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Platoon and a Company location, convoy drills, rolling replens and vehicle navigation. Both the rolling replenishment and the vehicle navigation were conducted during the day to allow the soldiers to understand how they worked, and then at night to show a more realistic scenario. Once the RSOI package was complete, the two Platoons moved into ECCPs where they were immediately put to the test of defending their locations as enemy sightings and attacks were a constant threat. This allowed for communication at all levels to be tested, as each attack needed all individuals within the Platoon to understand what was happening, and where. That information was then passed to the Platoon CPs and then finally to Company HQ. The final attack of this phase saw several enemy assault one of the Platoon locations. While there were enough soldiers to hold and defend the position, there were not enough to strike an effective counter attack, therefore a QRF team was called for from the other Platoon and within just a few short minutes the fire fight was won. The next phase of the Exercise was held at Beaches Barn and was a rehab and maintenance day which allowed everyone to catch up on some muchneeded sleep! This maintenance day gave Company Ops the ability to scrutinise the previous layouts of the CP and come up with future options to trial in the upcoming days. Once mission maintenance on all the vehicles was complete and everyone was back to a fully functional state, the validation section of the exercise began. This phase started with a fully tactical move to an urban environment (Baden Down Farm) using a step up and Company main to control and oversee the movement. Once the Company had moved into location and established Platoon and HQ areas, the first set of ES serials began. The tasking, which came
