Download - Royal Australian Navy

06.
Overview of Defence Activities in the Jervis Bay Area
Captain Greg Yorke, RAN
The Royal Australia Navy (RAN) and the Department of Defence have used the Jervis
Bay area for quite some years. Predominantly, we are talking about the East Australia
Exercise Area (EAXA) that encompasses the water space. The area extends from
Sydney down the southern coast of New South Wales (NSW) to the Victorian border,
from the coastline out to some one hundred miles off the NSW coast. Within that area,
the RAN conducts a wide range of activities, from missile firings through to complex
and sophisticated weapons systems engagements, to some of the more unsophisticated
systems and older systems, into sub-surface activities and anti-air warfare. The Royal
Australia Air Force (RAAF) also exercise in the area, using the ranges for missile
firings, and the RAN obviously has lots of air activity providing support to units in
and around the exercise areas.
While the tempo of submarine operations in the EAXA has reduced over the last four
years, with the majority of RAN submarines now based in Western Australia, it is still
a very good area for our submarine operations. Given that 50 per cent of our surface
fleet is based on the east coast, the RAN still conducts many submarine activities in
and around the EAXA. Jervis Bay is also used by submariners to exercise with Special
Forces and conduct some activity with the Fleet Air Arm, such as wet winching. RAN
helicopters use the areas for their weapon drops. Visiting ships that come to Australia
often utilise the wide range of facilities that are available in the EAXA, predominantly
these are from the Royal New Zealand Navy and the United States Navy, but the offer
to use the area is there to any of the navies visiting the region.
The Jervis Bay Range Facility (JBRF) is an airfield located on the southern shore of
Jervis Bay. Within JBRF, the RAN has the Ship Survivability School, with mock ship
structures so that we can exercise firefighting and damage control activities in a
realistic environment. JBRF is also used by the Army for training, particularly by
3 RAR (Parachute) and 4 RAR (Commandos). The RAAF use JBRF for some of their air
defence units undergoing airfield defence training. Also resident in the JBRF is the
Kalkara flight, which is the unmanned missile target aircraft used by Defence.
On the other side of the bay is the Beecroft Weapons Range. This is one of three weapons
ranges in Australia where Defence conducts live fire bombardments onto the shore
from the sea and air. The other two ranges are Townsend Island in the Shoalwater Bay
training area in Queensland and Lancelin in Western Australia. This activity is obviously
very important to the RAN, as was demonstrated during the war against Iraq in 2003
when HMAS Anzac was called upon for naval gunfire support in the Al Faw Peninsula
in support of the Royal Marines. The training that Anzac conducted in and around
Australia using these ranges led to the proficiency that allowed her to undertake that
task with extreme accuracy. It also allows RAN warfare teams and Principal Warfare