Page 120 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep-Oct 2022

120 LAND WARFARE RFSG
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
ARMY’S SECRET WEAPON
The snaking coastline of Australia’s northern border is one of the most isolated and exposed in the world; an open gate to illegal fishing, illegal arrivals, drug-running and other threats to national security.
ROYA GHODSI | SYDNEY
ALONG this 16,000-kilometre stretch of coastline and in many parts of northern Australia, local Indigenous com- munities are sometimes the only human presence for thou- sands of kilometres.
Their traditional knowledge of the sea, landscape, sea- sons and weather in these remote regions is more inti- mate and detailed than any military GPS system – and it is knowledge that the Australian Army is harnessing for the protection of Australia’s borders through the Regional Force Surveillance Group (RFSG).
The RFSG was formally established in October 2018 and commands the Australian Army Reserve’s three Regional Force Surveillance Units: namely, 51st Battalion, Far North Queensland Regiment (51FNQR); North-West Mobile Force
“LOCAL INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES ARE SOMETIMES THE ONLY HUMAN PRESENCE FOR THOUSANDS OF KILOMETRES”
(NORFORCE); and The Pilbara Regi- ment.
Together, their area of operations spans roughly 50 per cent of the Aus- tralian continent, 2.5 per cent of the world’s total landmass and numerous local language groups.
“The Group is of the North, it op- erates exclusively in the North and is essentially the whole of govern- ment’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the North,” Lieutenant Colonel Steven Medlin,
Commanding Officer of NORFORCE told delegates at the ADM Northern Australia Defence Summit in April. “The RFSG is a long-range reconnaissance and surveillance for- mation. It lives by its motto ‘Always On’ by virtue of the fact that we live and operate in the regions that we protect; and we recruit and we are manned by country men and women from those regions where we live.”
ABOVE RIGHT: A Lance Corporal from the North-West Mobile Force keeps an eye out from an observation post during a training activity in Alice Springs
BACKGROUND
The three units which comprise the RFSG were originally stood up in the 1980s, and before that had varied legacies as military units stretching back some 80 years to World War II.
NORFORCE’s lineage, for example, can be traced back to the North Australia Observer Unit, or the ‘Nackeroos’, formed in 1942 to patrol the northern coastline, from the Kimberley region of WA to the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit (NTSRU) which was tasked with detecting and disrupting Japanese incursions.
DEFENCE