Page 14 - 1RHA 2021

1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery
Artillery Brigade delivered a dynamic fire plan with AS90s, Light gun, MLRS and Estonian D30s. Exercise SPRING TIDE allowed further training opportunities to be conducted, most notable with the US Airborne Artillery and the US Black Hawk medical air wing operating in the region.
Many of you will have watched the heart-breaking scenes in Kabul earlier this year as the MOD and other government agen- cies, along with a host of other nations, evacuated those Afghans who had supported their respective national campaigns in Afghanistan along with their own national representatives. This Operation, named PITTING from a UK perspective, was just one element of a complicated operation to rehome our Afghan allies. In support of the wider PITTING effort, B Battery deployed sol- diers and officers to both the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) to provide bespoke support. At very short notice, B Battery soldiers deployed to the FCDO providing a surge capacity to contact those Afghans trying to escape Afghanistan. Due to tight timelines, long hours followed contacting those in Afghanistan who were desperate to leave their home nation. The team directly contacted over a thousand Afghans to ascertain if they were eligible under the UK’s reloca- tion scheme, with almost 500 of them being confirmed on flights to the UK. A further deployment saw B Battery deploy soldiers in support of the Home Office as they tried to offer these refugees a warm welcome to the UK. For those former B Battery soldiers reading this; you should be proud of the dedication, empathy, and resilience that the current generation of B Battery soldiers dem- onstrated doing a job that none of them ever expected to do – the reports of their performance are truly heart-warming.
Whilst B Battery has demonstrated its flexibility on a variety of different tasks this year, it remains an Armoured Artillery Battery. B Battery exists to find and kill people and things, at range, in support of the 1RRF Battle Group – we are therefore relishing the opportunity, as part of our post-COVID-19 regain, to focus on our core job of being Armoured Gunners again. The ongoing pan- demic has meant that many of our new soldiers have joined an Army that has been forced to adapt to COVID-19. Can you imag- ine going through training where you can’t get too close to peo- ple and the freedoms to train and exercise are greatly reduced? To that end, we used Ex CYPHER SHARPEN to introduce basic soldiering skills to our newest, and to freshen the skills for those who had not had the opportunity to train this year. Covering basic soldiering skills, and an introduction to many basic artil-
lery manoeuvre actions, this exercise was a welcome introduc- tion and a reminder of what being a Gunner was all about before COVID-19.
Exercise ARIES STORM allowed B Battery to stretch its legs and formally begin its regain as an Armoured Artillery Battery. The exercise sought to test how the Divisional Artillery Group fights in a contemporary context. Conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh have demonstrated that the proliferation of sensors, when fused with effective munitions, means that any- thing armoured is at risk on a contemporary battlefield. Therefore, how we fight artillery at the sub-unit, regiment, brigade and divi- sional level needs to be re-considered. Ex ARIES STORM, with a simulated and synthetic wrap, allowed the key assumptions about how we fight artillery to be tested and, critically, allowed us the space and time to test new ideas about how we could address short comings. The exercise, which included all units from within the 1St Artillery bridge and other ISTAR and Air Defence assets, allowed us to test ourselves in a congested battlespace. With electronic signatures being measured, Super B, managed to stay undetected for over 5 days. These skills will be highly useful – particularly changing our reliance on voice transmission with a focus on digital means of communications. Becoming digital be default, is an important step to ensure the survivability of artil- lery in the future, and B Battery demonstrated that it works, but requires a change of mindset and approach. The final phase of the exercise was set aside to innovate – the testing of new and novel ideas aligned to key challenges. For B Battery, this meant experimenting with the idea of ‘dispersal beyond the point of dis- comfort.’ With gun troops and gun pairs being spread out up to 5km between fire units – C2 and situational appreciation was greatly reduced, but survivability was increased. B Battery, along with 1 RHA and 1st Artillery brigade will take these observations and results to inform how we fight and train in the future.
B Battery has a proud history of sporting success and COVID- 19 has not stopped that. With Lance Bombardier Palu being selected for the Army Volleyball team, Gunner Bakani training with the Army’s Under 23’s Rugby team and Sergeant Kenwood representing the Royal Artillery’s football team we have bounced back with aplomb. Most notable, however, is Lieutenant Marcus Webb’s selection to represent Team GB at this year’s Biathlon Summer World Championships. Lieutenant Webb will also rep- resent GB Team in November at the International Biathlon Union Cup in Germany.
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