‘Will I need my helmet for this sir?’ In this episode, our guest Shetty recounts his foundational experiences as an Artillery Officer. A mechanical engineer by ‘trade’, Shetty chose artillery because ‘he watched something blow up in the distance’ and that was enough to get him into the corps which says far more about our guest than the corps itself.

Shetty recounts stories of accidental Danger Close, the lightning bolts that are sent down a radio when a random officer makes up his own callsign on a safety net and getting his bush hat loaded into an M777 and fired through as an act of admiration or hatred from his soldiers on the gunline. He also talks through a setback at RMC that meant that he had to do II Class a second time, and what it felt like to see his cohort progress while he had to stay at RMC.

The three streams in the Royal Australian Artillery are Offensive Support, Uncrewed Aerial Systems, and Air Defence. In Offensive Support, Shetty started as a Fire Support Officer (FSO), a Command Post Officer (CPO) and then a Forward Observer (FO) in a Joint Fires Team (JFT) and has loved every moment. Most junior officers command troops or platoons of 40+ soldiers; however, in the biggest rort in Army, JFT commanders have a maximum of five soldiers and spend their days in the gym and a mysterious place called ‘The Dome’.

Join us as we cover all things Offensive Support and subscribe to The Cove Community Podcast so that you can don your helmets for next week's episode full of field warries and another of Jake’s original songs.