Page 28 - Bugle Spring 2023

4 RANGER
Ex APOLLOS SABRE
R Coy conduct urban operations
We also had access to some truly cutting- edge kit
July 10th, 2022. The hottest week since records began – what better time for the Rangers of R Company and their partners the Omani Desert Regiment to be tested on our Mission Readiness Exercise?
Ex APOLLO’S SABRE marked the culmination of R Company’s Training ROTO. It was an 8-month marathon which saw us hack out OPs in the frozen mud of Sennybridge; plan intensively for deployments to fragile Pacific countries and raids against transnational crime cartels; and practice, week in and week out, until the deliberate dance of CQB and the careful choreography of a detention operation were understood by all, from the most senior Team Ops Officer to the newest Ranger.
R Company were quietly confident and knew Ex APOLLOS SABRE would test us to our limits. The complexity and depth of the scenario – a joint deployment to a war-torn African country where VEOs, criminal organisations and hostile state actors all manoeuvred for their own murky motives – would stretch our ability to plan what we had experienced before. Add to this a full suite of enablers (from J2 targeteers and UAS to legal advisors and electronic warfare specialists), and our partners from the Omani Desert Regiment (formidable in their own right,
but unaccustomed to the landscape of rural England and with different planning methods
our adversary, an extremist insurgency, out
of the fight. Alongside our Omani partners we raided isolated farm compounds, seized FOBs and training camps from the enemy, assisted refugees fleeing a humanitarian crisis, and finally drove the VEO out of the area with a night-time raid onto the local village where we captured or neutralised the last of their key leaders.
Unlike other exercises, we did not sit by and wait to be fed information about our next objective. Rather, our targeting cell exploited and analysed the captured material seized on our raids and used that intelligence to feed
and a language barrier to overcome) and you had a recipe for a suitably testing experience.
With the drought-bleached fields of Thetford standing in for the African plains, and the mercury sat steadily above 30C (too cold, our Omani friends insisted!) R Company set to work. Over the course of the next two weeks we executed four deliberate operations and a number of hasty actions, primarily focused on taking key members of
28 RIFLES The Bugle
our next target. We uncovered the enemy network piece by piece, before Rangers and Omanis struck them with no warning in the dead of night. We also had access to some truly cutting-edge kit to tip the scales even further in our favour; our NV-33 NODs with their thermal overlays really did turn night into day as advertised, and chest-mounted ATAK tablets allowed us to coordinate a hasty assault between two teams, within 50
metres of the enemy, without a word ever being spoken out
loud. Ultimately our best asset, however, were the Rangers on the ground and our Omani partners. How far the company has come in such a short time has been a sight to behold. Captain Tom Lagana
Team Commander
R Coy break in