What can the RAAC look forward to?
There’s a rumour going around that the 1st Armoured Regiment’s combat role might be restored. Rumours, of course, can be either right or wrong.
The report below suggests that the unit’s current employment is very mundane:
It has now been confirmed that personnel from the 1st Armoured Regiment operated a heavy stores module converted into a deployable advanced manufacturing shelter at Cultana Training Area. The trial also reportedly utilised Carvera desktop CNC machines which are designed for precision milling of aluminium, wood, plastics and other materials.
Is this really why 1 Armd Regt was stripped of its tanks and converted into an experimentation unit … to mill wood and plastics?
The sad fact is that no-one will explain why it was necessary to swap a unit with a 75-year heritage as a tank regiment, for one tasked with evaluating emerging technologies?
The role of the new unit has no connection at all with the role of the RAAC. How could this possibly happen?
That’s a question for yesterday. The question for today is – what can be done now?
It was the former Chief of Army who decided that 1 Armd Regt was to be made a non-combatant. Will the new CA uphold this decision or will she return 1 Armd Regt to its rightful place as 3 Brigade’s tank regiment?
If she decides to leave things as they are, what does the RAAC do about 1 Armd Regt? It has no RAAC role and contributes nothing to the Corps.
The Armoured Corps’ role is “to locate, identify, capture and destroy the enemy, by day or night, in combination with other arms, using fire and manoeuvre”.
There is obviously no place for an experimentation unit in the RAAC.
The Head of Corps must act accordingly. But I have no authority to tell the HOC what to do? Who has?
The RAAC Corps Conference is coming up in the not-too distant future. This is the forum to decide what to do and what action to initiate!
But will it take action – or will it equivocate, once again? Wait a minute, that’s not what happened!
The problem is that the RAAC Corps Conference has no authority, it is an advisory body only. The 2025 Conference recommended that: “It remains your Corps’ experts’ view that the optimal way to train the tanks in Townsville is to provide a dedicated headquarters over them. It is also the optimal way to train 3 Bde’s cavalry”.
Amazingly, Major General Michael Krause (the RAAC Representative Honorary Colonel) went on to say: “if another battle-group HQ is raised in Townsville to train the tanks, it should not be at the expense of the experimental unit. This should remain an RAAC command”.
This is simply unbelievable! The experimentation unit has nothing whatsoever to do with the RAAC; yet the RAAC’s most senior officer is wanting to continue to foster it.
This is the sort of attitude which will undoubtedly hold the RAAC back. For heaven’s sake: relocate 1 Armd Regt to Townsville; return 2 Cav Regt to a recon regiment; and retain 2/14 LHR (QMI) as an ARA unit.
Once this is done, we might have an RAAC that we can be proud of, once more!
Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Cameron, MC, RAAC (Ret’d)
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