Page 93 - QDG 2023

1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards 91
The Gunnery School: A Year In Review
The year began for the Gunnery School with the “left-right” sucker punches of my arrival as Officer Commanding and the imminent arrival of a large batch of Ukrainians intending to be trained on the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank. Being at the forefront of Defence’s main effort and genuinely doing something was very exciting but did involve some trepidation as I had to this point never even been inside a CR2. Fortunately, I had plenty of very expert senior soldiers who had and I was brought up to speed. Less fortu- nately this whole affair did involve (un) healthy doses of media attention which climaxed with the visit of Messrs Zelensky and Sunak. It was very apparent on the Ukrainian soldiers’ arrival exactly where there had been, and the nature of the fighting they had been involved in. My most prominent memories are their OC showing me his successful T-80 kills on his phone, and that they had a penchant for smoking that would make the Flying Scotsman blush. One of the 14 Challengers has been destroyed, but everything else we hear is that the Ukrainian Challenger Crews are doing well. I truly wish them the very best of luck.
Our second surprise was far less sexy and exciting and has consumed far more effort; funny how these things always work. 3XX has decided to change its whole training pipeline, which for an armoured training establishment does pop a large anvil onto the inner workings. Every single course had to be reviewed,
lesson by lesson, justifying each and every serial. This is with the view to getting Soldiers and Officers back in role, within their fighting formations, so they can all train together properly; all
Tanks
Live Firing on its clearance trials. They are genuinely very impressed with it. All schnebbing aside, it is a serious bit of kit. Boxer is also kicking off this year, with
the first company of 1RRF coming through the School in the spring. I will be rather pleased when they stick a proper gun on top of it as I have a vested interest in big guns on armoured vehicles. I have been assured that is the plan; we wait and see. We have spent much of this year preparing for both, and the period of overlap between them and Warrior. Everyone loves a shiny new toy, though if we are being honest two at the same time is quite inconvenient, but there are worse problems
to have. By this time next year both plat- forms will be genuinely embedded into the Field Army, and that is exciting.
Lulworth is a place of extremes. Extremely sunny and pleasant in the summer, extremely windy and miserable in the winter. In solidaric pathetic fallacy with its coastal home, the Gunnery School has followed several similar cycles through 2023. It has weathered (I wish I could stop) this rollercoaster and continued to deliver the most profes- sional training of its kind in the world.
SLU
very laudable principles. Accompanying this, there is
no longer a tactics course for
the Armoured and Armoured
Infantry Crew Commanders.
Instead, the tactical theory is
distributed throughout the
other modules, including
Gunnery. The idea being they
then put this all into practice
and earn their tactics qual-
ification whilst deployed
alongside their troops on the
new ‘Iron Cyclone’ exercises;
that will dominate the Plain
for most of the year. This
means my Gunnery Instruc-
tors have had to put the drill rounds down and pick up their webbing (metaphori- cally, obviously) and teach some tactics. We are lucky that our senior SIs have got lots of tactical experience on their plat- forms from Iraq, Afghanistan and BATUS; and so have plenty of wisdoms to impart onto their students.
We are now busy preparing for the arrival of Ajax and Boxer into the Field Army, and therefore the Gunnery School. The Ajax beast has been firmly awoken. We have taught our first set of HCR Ajax Regimental Instructors (Gunnery), and our Schools Instructors have been
the Ukrainian Challenger Crews are doing well.
I truly wish them the very best of luck.
more tanks
and another tank