3 Armoured Engineer Squadron,

News Update

1st December 2003.

BATUS and Beyond.

The Squadron are now approaching the end of a very busy year. Working to the Army's three year cycles we have just completed our training year and are preparing to move onto the high readiness year.

Reflecting back on the past few months, I would like to update you on the Squadrons activities since returning from our adventure training exercise in Spain. (See July 03, Sqn news). We all enjoyed some well earned leave before deploying to BATUS in Canada for our final training exercise, as the culmination of the training year. The exercise consisted of two discrete parts, a 10 day Live Firing Exercise and a 3 week Exercise using the latest Tactical Effect Simulator, (TES). The TES exercise involves the troops wearing a vest and vehicles being fitted with recievers, also all weapons are fitted with the TES equipment, this enables the computer to simulate the effect of weapons on everyone and every vehicle, allowing us to train in the most realistic environment possible.

The Live Firing Exercise was a success with the training areas in Canada allowing us a lot more freedom than the training areas in the UK. This was of particular interest on the demolition ranges wher we could place much larger charges than we are used to and with much more freedom. We progressed from special to Armoured Engineer training up to being integrated with other arms in the final Battle Group mission.

The TES exercise again was a success with the Battle Group progressing up to Brigade level training. The TES equipment offers individuals the chance to be heroes and a few Land Rovers were seen chasing enemy tanks away !!!!! One advantage of TES is that when the computer tells you that you have died, you go to a collection area named Hell and ....well sleep, this may explain some of the particularly brave behaviour. All in all the training went well and we all achieved the Collective Performance level required of us.

In addition to the military training our time in Canada also offered us many other opportunities, there is a BATUS adventure training centre in the Rocky Mountains. Many members of the Squadron were able to spend a week in the mountains to take advantage of the excellent facilities on offer, which included parachuting, horse trekking, climbing, walking and canoeing all of which were set with the Rockies providing a stunning backdrop. Other members of the Squadron were able tospend some of their time on R&R enjoying the nearby cities of Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The Squadron have now all returned to the UK and we are starting to prepare for our deployment to Iraq in April 2004. So after a very busy training year, there is no let up as we prepare to put all of our training into practice.

Duncan Bailey, Captain.

3 AES Training Officer.