The campaign to reinstate 1st Armoured Regiment’s combat status
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What more can be done?
More than 120 letters have been published in CONTACT thus far. One received more than 10,000 views (how incredible this sounds, but it’s true). Numerous letters have also been published in the Canberra Times.
The injustice that was meted out to 1st Armoured Regiment has been made known across a wide spectrum of those concerned by what happened to the unit.
The former Chief of Army, however, was insistent on the need to create an experimentation unit. Although such a unit was important to him, it had to be seen to be the cheapest option available (because of the pressures placed on the defence budget by AUKUS).
Given that 1 Armd Regt was already in Adelaide and the South Australian government was establishing a technology centre there, it was that unit that had to be the one sacrificed.
So far, there’s no indication that the current CA will take a different view.
This, despite the fact that making 1 Armd Regt a non-combatant, has meant that 3 Brigade has been left short a tank squadron, a cavalry squadron and a battle-group headquarters.
Which, of course, makes no sense at all!
The 2026 National Defence Strategy tasks the ADF to:
“Defend Australia and our immediate region”; and
“Deter through denial any potential adversary’s attempt to project power against Australia through our northern approaches”.
Given that 3 Brigade is supposedly an armoured brigade based in Townsville … how can weakening it by almost a third be justified by the creation of an experimentation unit?
Townsville acts as the principal mounting base for the ADF to project power and deploy troops into the Indo-Pacific.
Despite this, the combat power that 3 Brigade can bring to bear has been significantly reduced. Surely, something is amiss here?
It’s been posited before that the former CA had a fixation with creating an experimentation unit … a fixation to the detriment of national security overall.
There can be little doubt that this was the case; the legacy of which now sits with the present CA. Hopefully, she will come to understand the injustice that 1 Armd Regt has been dealt, and correct it.
The need to reinstate 1 Armd Regt’s combat status will continue to be raised in letters to editors.
How long the campaign will last, is unknown. What is known, however, is that there is an overwhelming need to salvage the heritage of 1 Armd Regt and return it to its RAAC combat role.
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Cameron, MC, RAAC (Ret’d)
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FILE PHOTO: Australian Army and Indonesian National Armed Forces soldiers, supported by an M1A1 Abrams tank, conduct a combined joint-force entry operation as part of Exercise Keris Woomera at Banongan Beach, Indonesia. Photo by Leading Seaman Rikki-Lea Phillips.
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If you actually had any idea of the current composition of the unit, you’d know that there are only a handful of armoured soldiers there. maybe enough crv and tank crewman to make a single tp worth, the rest are entirely support roles. sending all the black hats up to townsville would not benefit at all and the major issue at play is retention, causing the undermanning of 3 bde.
In SVN we learnt the hard way that tanks were useful as mobile fire support in jungle warfare contrary to contemporary advice. We don’t seem to learn much from history do we. I can relate numerous cases from my 20 years in the service where political and beauracratic decisions and scrimping financial restrictions turned promising tactics and equipment procurements into disasters. We usually made the best of things, but thank our lucky stars we did not have to fight a modern equipped enemy in a war.
How are we supposed to defend our country when they take away what has proven to work… at this point we could not defend one side of a draughts board. I served in 3/4 cav and it was a proud successful unit. What happens when we find out that this technology doesn’t work as good as expected and we have to bring machinery out of mothballs,we have to spend millions to get it back up to speed and train a whole new group from scratch with no experienced personnel.
The First Armoured Regiment was elementary to demobilising 28 Armoured Regiments after WW11. Armoured Centre as focus point with nucleus troop, the centurion tank gave the RAAC focus point. It stands to reason that a small defence force can give good service to development.
The end of WW11 saw Marine expeditionary doctrine adopted where practical.
Deployments in custodial sense are time related.
Technical templates are expansive.
The First Amoured Regiment gave depth to the ground forces, a communcation mobile pill box, still does. Depth in warfare is managed by cost.
Detraditionalising through commercialisation has resulted in innovational development.
The unit gave me time to assumilate multi nation ground warfare experience. No tank battles, no deployment more over a custodial depth of knowledge, the keys of knowledge, handed them over to the crewman.
The unit has depth, tactical, technical and adminstrative process to roll with or with out tracks for future crisis.
When re rolled, The First Amoured Regiment will come with a very diverse set of TAC, TECH, ADMIN platforms.
What about 3/4 Cav Regt. That got taken away, but the old Bruce can’t be that broad minded.
‘3 Brigade has been left short a tank squadron, a cavalry squadron and a battle-group headquarters’…. but has an armoured regiment (2 cav), 2 inf bn, 1 sp gun regt, eng regt, and a cssb. Seems like a complete bde to me.
Anonymous,
An armoured brigade (which 3 Brigade is supposed to be) comprises a tank regiment, a cavalry regiment, and a mechanised infantry battalion. The brigade is missing a tank squadron, a cavalry squadron and a battle-group headquarters. The absence of the battlegroup HQ badly weakens it!