Combat engineering vehicles put through their paces at Puckapunyal

Sappers were also training on a variety of front end attachments, including the combat dozer blade, the full-width mine plough and the excavator manipulator arm.

Project LAND 907 was instigated in 2021 and will see all 75 of its new M1A2 main battle tanks and 46 CEVs delivered by the end of the year.

Warrant Officer Class 2 Robert Barrera is a sapper, CEV course manager and program manager currently posted to the School of Armour, helping bridge the gap between engineering and armoured tactics.

“The School of Armour and the School of Military Engineering have been working together to support the development of doctrine as this is a new capability to Defence,” he said.

“Seeing the sappers from 3CER and soldiers from the School of Armour in these platforms is great because this has been a project that I’ve been supporting for a long time.

“To actually see it realised, to know that this capability is moving up to 3CER within the next couple of months, and to know that they’re going to be employing it later this year, seeing that come to fruition has been a big highlight.”

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CEVs will allow sappers to conduct breaching, bridging and engineering all while protected under armour, increasing their survivability.

Corporal Liam Kelly, one of the sappers training on the CEVs, said it was a “game changer”.

“Before CEV, we pretty much just rolled in dismounted into the bridge, basically,” CPL Kelly said.

“I think the new CEV is a great capability. It’s definitely going to increase our ability to perform breaching operations, and it’s also going to greatly increase the capacity at which we can provide that mobility support to our friendly forces and get them to move around the battle space.

“Being able to do it under armour, obviously, you’re a lot more defended. It’s going to take less soldiers in the breach, which is what you want. It’s going to be a lot faster as well.”