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Australian Defence Force personnel have demonstrated a multitude of advanced air domain capabilities in the most recent iteration of Exercise Diamond Spear.
Conducted from Royal Australian Air Force bases around the country, the exercise had a primary focus on delivering long-range maritime strikes, signifying strength in integration from a range of capabilities that make up the intricacies of the air domain.
These include combat assets, air battle managers, mobility, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance measures.
The scenarios practiced in the exercise had a key target of locating and subsequently holding maritime objectives.
“Candidates were presented with a realistic operational environment, including complex threats, the challenge of distance and the requirement to integrate multi-domain capabilities,” said Group Captain Andrew Hagstrom, exercise director.
“Exercise Diamond Spear emphasised the challenges of coordinating and delivering lethal and survivable long-range maritime strikes.
“This continued to develop the candidates’ [ability] to coordinate a wide variety of integrated force capabilities, demonstrating the ADF’s ability to hold adversaries at risk, at range.”
The exercise marks a wider milestone for candidates in the six-month Air Warfare Instructor Course (AWIC) as they continue their training towards becoming highly technical and advanced in their skill sets.
The next phase of the AWIC is Exercise Diamond Storm, which will see a “Dawn Strike” later in July.
“Through a professional exercise control workforce, as well as the inclusion of a broad range of integrated force capabilities, Diamond Spear scenarios comprised contemporary threats and a realistic operating environment to provide challenging tactical problems for the candidates,” GPCAPT Hagstrom said.
“They were required to develop solutions both in mission planning and in response to changing conditions during execution.”
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