Countering an attack

As Victoria Police and national authorities constantly monitor terrorism threats, police and defence force personnel are also strengthening their tactical and pre-emptive response to extremist incidents.

In late-May this year, more than 160 specialist officers and support staff from Victoria Police, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Special Forces and national intelligence agencies assembled at the Royal Australian Air Force base in Point Cook to train for just such a scenario.

Exercise Simpson is the latest training exercise to bring counter terrorism authorities together and featured the field exercise at Point Cook along with three further simulated events run at the same time.

Victoria Police Counter Terrorism Command Assistant Commissioner Mick Hermans said the exercise was aimed at exploring and testing how Victoria Police and the ADF can work together in the event of a terrorist incident across multiple locations in Victoria.

“With the Point Cook field exercise and three simulated events all run in real-time, the response to the multi-location scenario was coordinated from the State Police Operations Centre at the Victoria Police Centre in Melbourne’s CBD,” AC Hermans said.

“The scenario involved the culmination of a covert Joint Counter Terrorism Teamled investigation that involved the planned arrest and premises search of three persons of interest in relation to a planned chemical, biological, radiological and/or nuclear (CBRN) attack.”

In the scenario at Point Cook, Victoria Police’s specialist units were able to deploy to the suspects’ location and use techniques that gave police commanders greater situational awareness of the specific risks and threats.

Victoria Police and ADF also jointly operated remotely-piloted aircraft systems and other technology to provide intelligence that enhanced tactical planning by the forward units.

Based on this information, the police commanders decided the situation required a tactical resolution using the Special Operations Group, with members from the Bomb Response Unit, Forensic Services and ADF Special Operations Engineers Regiment on hand to deal with any devices and CBRN materials used by the offenders.

Medics and decontamination teams from the ADF and Victoria Police stood ready to assist the assault teams and dozens more specialist personnel supported the operation.

AC Hermans said the exercise was part of Victoria Police’s continued collaborative training with the ADF.

“On this occasion, we wanted to test the callout of specialist ADF assets to enhance specific capabilities in a Victoria Police-led response to a series of dynamically evolving terrorism incidents with a CBRN element,” he said.

“Our legal teams were involved as well, testing the flexibility within the legislation for Victoria Police to work alongside the ADF and explore what we could and could not do.”

AC Hermans said Exercise Simpson was the culmination of three earlier lead-up exercises run throughout Victoria and at the ADF’s Holsworthy Barracks in New South Wales.

“Running these exercises has not been easy this year, with various coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns across the different states presenting significant challenges for us, particularly in the movement of personnel between states,” he said.

“We had been planning this for 12 months, but the added element of the pandemic has just meant that we were further trained to be adaptive and agile, which is exactly what is needed in counter terrorism environments.

“It was very successful because we covered ground that we’ve not done before.” Counter Terrorism Command has a further 14 training exercises planned for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022.

“We are always looking to enhance our capabilities and our capacity in counter terrorism,” AC Hermans said.

“These exercises not only train our personnel, but they help us make national recommendations as part of the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, they feed into future exercises and they inform the training packages we give our members.

“While we never want to have to use these counter terrorism capabilities, we are constantly training, preparing and enhancing the way we keep Victorians safe.”

Editorial and photography: Jesse Wray-McCann