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Amphibious War Games Ready Australia to Battle Rapid Change, Constant Threats How do you make a 60-tonne tank float? It's a problem the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has only just solved after years of trying. But the bigger question is — why would you want it to? Getting Australia's main battle tank, the M1A1 Abrams, from ship to shore has been one of the more challenging pieces of a much-larger puzzle. How can Australia's military prepare to fight a war on and around islands in the Pacific and Asia? If you think that sounds like something from World War II, you'd be right. That's the last time Australia had the need, and the ability, to launch large-scale amphibious operations. Aerial shot of army landing boats carrying battle tanks and troop carriers as they reach a sandy beach But 70 years ago, tanks were a lot lighter, communications were a lot simpler and war was waged on air, land and sea — without the extra complications of cyberwar, autonomous systems and even space warfare. But the islands of the Pacific and Asia are again at the forefront of Australia's national security interests. In June, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said that Australia was "perhaps at the front and centre of the geo-strategic challenge in the IndoPacific". Which brings us back to the floating tank. Australian warships and Army helicopters as well as landing craft are visible making a coordinated landing from sea to a beach. The amphibious warfare drills the ADF has been practising are about getting troops, weapons and supplies 24
AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPER
Landing craft carry tanks and other armoured vehicles ashore as part of an amphibious warfare exercise in North Queensland. Defence image.
Australian jeeps and troops land at Balikpapan in Japanese-held Borneo in 1945. Australian War Memorial.
ashore fast, without being wiped out by the enemy. However, as fighting vehicles get heavier — to give better protection to soldiers and carry better weapons — it gets harder to move them into fighting positions. Efforts to put army tanks onto the
navy's landing craft in 2016 were abandoned due to safety concerns. While these latest efforts were successful, they took place on relatively calm seas and the tanks were transferred from large warships within view of the shore — they didn't have to travel far.
