‘The scale of Talisman Sabre from a geographic perspective is difficult to comprehend and, in some cases, it can be quite difficult to describe.’

In this week’s episode, we talk through all things Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025, the largest Australian Defence Force Exercise this year. Our guest this week – SQNLDR Zac Smit – is an Operations Officer in the Exercise Control on Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 and has lived and breathed this exercise since January this year. We record on-the-road from the Combined Joint Information Bureau at Gallipoli Barracks in South-East Queensland.

Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 included 43,000 participants in an area spanning 5,300km, 24 warships including 2 carrier strike groups, 270+ aircraft flying 2,000 sorties for the duration of the exercise, the 1st (Australian) Division employed together as the Army’s unit of action, multiple combined joint forcible entry operations via air and amphibious insertion methods, the first live firing of Defence Australia’s HIMARS and Precision Strike Missile, the largest ADF medical effect since the Vietnam War, and the full-activation of Joint Logistics Command Australia’s theatre logistics system.

In this episode, SQNLDR Smit talks about how much different this Talisman Sabre was to Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023, what we set out to achieve in terms of exercise objectives, the impact that global issues can have on the entire exercise and then finally the lessons learnt or takeaways from his perspective in the hot-seat of the Exercise Control Current Operations. Teams of ADF, our partner nations and civilians worked tirelessly 24/7 to achieve some huge successes on one of the largest exercises ever conducted by the ADF.

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