Once that was completed, the team put the vehicles back together, performed a final inspection and prepared them to be shipped over to Australia.Īll the vehicles were taken to a PSA port and loaded on a commercial ship. Like a Lego set, the vehicles were then disassembled and thoroughly washed, before their individual parts were examined by an Australian inspector to ensure they were free of mud and sand. The vehicles include tanks, five-tonners that transport troops or goods, a Trailblazer counter-mine vehicle used to disable land mines, and wheeled or armoured recovery vehicles that tow away broken-down machines.įSG's maintenance team, comprising 36 personnel, first had to inspect them in Singapore. Planning for the unusually large shipments began in February, while the actual work kicked off about two months later. So how did the vehicles – totalling more than 420 – get from Singapore to Australia? “400-plus assets is really a huge number,” he said, glancing at rows of Terrexes, Belrex protected combat support vehicles, Leopard 2SG main battle tanks and Bronco all-terrain tracked carriers behind him, covered in desert dust. Military Expert 3 (ME3) Chen Tianxiang, second-in-charge of the FSG’s maintenance team, told reporters on Monday (Oct 9) that Exercise Wallaby is on a “much bigger scale” compared with other overseas exercises conducted by the SAF. This year, the group had a mammoth task on its hands, with the the largest edition of Exercise Wallaby in seven years featuring about 4,300 SAF personnel and 450 assets such as armoured fighting vehicles. SHOALWATER BAY, Queensland: For soldiers participating in the Singapore Armed Forces' (SAF) largest unilateral overseas training exercise, the Forward Support Group (FSG) plays an integral but occasionally overlooked role.Ī composite of different units within the SAF, it is responsible for moving hundreds of huge military vehicles more than 5,000km from Singapore to Australia for Exercise Wallaby, among a myriad other functions.įor one, when soldiers arrive at their campgrounds in Shoalwater Bay Training Area, everything – including sleeping tents – will have already been set up by FSG, which starts from scratch and has three days of lead time.
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