Ballarat successfully completes Unit Readiness Evaluation

12 April 2011

HMAS Ballarat was put through her paces.

Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boat (RHIB) prepares to be recovered.

Exercise Triton Storm completes off the West Australian coast with four Aussie and two Kiwi Anzac Class Frigates, an Australian replenishment ship and submarine, as well as involvement of the Australian Air Force with patrol aircraft and fast jets.

The training period has come to a close after five weeks of exercising, as the Navy and Air Force assets have provided significant training opportunities for all units involved in the maritime exercise.

The crews of three Anzac Class frigates in particular, HMA Ships Toowoomba and Ballarat and HMNZS Te Mana have been put through their paces during the maritime exercise. These ships were assessed as Unit Ready, which allows them to continue their operations for the rest of the year, including international exercises and deployment to the Middle East.

As a direct result of the intensity of the exercise, HMAS Ballarat successfully completed Unit Readiness Evaluation.

Sea Training Group is Navy’s elite at-sea training unit and they assisted Ballarat to gain this successful outcome by coordinating scenarios that challenged the ship’s crew to deal with a number of situations simultaneously.

For example, Ballarat dealt with a major fire-fighting scenario which was intensified by continuous air-borne attacks while a boat transfer was being carried out to deliver supplementary firefighting equipment to the ship.

This kind of scenario goes a long way to providing training opportunities that reflect the reality of incidents that are seldom as straight forward as they seem.

Commander Guy Blackburn, Commanding Officer HMAS Ballarat said that it had been a challenging period for his crew, but the hard work had paid off.

“The achievement of Unit Readiness is extremely important for my crew as it gives us the confirmation that our at-sea skills are all on target. My ship’s ability to respond to a number of issues is enhanced by the complexity of the training scenarios we have experienced.”

HMAS Ballarat is deployed with sister ship HMAS Parramatta from their homeport of Sydney and will continue to South East Asia on completion of Exercise Triton Storm.

Ballarat successfully completes Unit Readiness Evaluation

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