Talisman Sabre is a biennial training exercise that was initially a bilateral arrangement between Australia and the United States but over a decade has grown to include over a dozen nations and 30,000 soldiers. Taking place in the Pacific, the exercise is nominally designed to deter Chinese military aggression.
"Together you are bolstering deterrence by building capacity alongside our allies and partners, and you're practicing logistics interoperability under realistic conditions, so that we can improve combined capabilities as well as our responses to a range of potential contingencies," Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin said during a visit to the training area.
However, this year tragedy struck the exercise when an MRH-90 helicopter catastrophically crashed into the ocean near the Great Barrier Reef during a nighttime training exercise. The Australian government soon announced that they would be mounting a recovery mission for the crew, as opposed to a rescue, as Australian Defense Minister Marles said there is no chance that the four-person crew survived the crash.
The Australian government has identified Cpt. Daniel Lyon, Lt. Maxwell Nugent, Warrant Officer Class Two Joseph Laycock, and Cpl. Alexander Naggs as the missing pilot and crew of the down helicopter. Other French-made MRH-90 helicopters in the Australian military have been grounded while an investigation is launched into the cause of the crash.
The Australian military located the crash site, but due to the depth and strong currents, the recovery operation will take some time to complete.
Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.
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