Exercise Pitch Black

Some pics for the fans of the RAAF and the RSAF. These are F/A-18s and F-16s taking part as the ‘strike’ force out of RAAF Ambereley near Brisbane.

PITCH BLACK 2002 from Air Commodore Pietsch

This is the first time that it’s been held on the east coast for about 15 years. This year is a scaled down exercise. There’s no US forces involved and there is no British forces involvement. The reason for that is of course, as we know, the real world activities are keeping many armed forces quite busy and Australia’s no different. We don’t have some of our forces with us this time, because some of them are deployed at the moment. The basis scenario for the exercise is really quite simple. We’ve got a strike force based her at Amberley and we’ve got a defending force at Williamtown. And the aim is to launch strike forces out of Amberley against targets, which will be defended by the Williamtown defenders. The expected outcome of the exercise is fairly straightforward. We’re looking for improving or maintaining and developing between he Republic of Singapore Air Force and our forces. We’re looking at improving the skill levels of aircrews and our fighter controllers. We’ve also got the army with their surface to air missiles out there training and out of it, we want to improve the preparedness of both of our forces.

Enjoy!

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