Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 is officially underway following an opening ceremony on board the HMAS Adelaide on Sunday the 13th of July. This year marks the 11th and largest iteration of Australia’s premier warfighting exercise with over 35,000 personnel from 19 nations participating. Encompassing air, land, sea, space and cyber domains, training activities will be conducted across Queensland, Northern Territory, Western Australia, New South Wales and Christmas Island. Talisman Sabre 2025 also marks a series of firsts including the use of Australia’s new UH-60M Black Hawks, the utilisation of Papua New Guinea for training exercises and the participation of the UK’s Prince of Wales Carrier Strike Group.
On the East Coast
Tracing its roots back to 2005, the inaugural edition of the exercise was centred on operations on the coast of Queensland. This continues today with the majority of ground based operations being conducted in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area (SWBTA) and Townsville Field Training Area with live-fire exercises, field training activities and ground force manoeuvres. Further amphibious operations sees the use of Cowley Beach Training Area and SWBTA with a large-scale raid planned for the township of Bowen in the second week of the exercise.
Australia’s new UH-60M Black Hawk are also participating for the first time following the introduction of the type in August 2023. This comes weeks after the second operating node at Swartz Barracks in Oakey taking delivery of their first three airframes. This follows the retirement of the MRH90 Taipan in 2023 with the Australian Army ordering 40 new UH-60M Black Hawk to replace them. Four aircraft are participating this year based in the Whitsunday Region.
Returning visitors to the region include the highly decorated 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) returning for their third consecutive iteration with both MH-60M Black Hawks and new MH-47G Block II Chinooks. In the coral sea, the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit returns with the USS America (LHD-6) and USS San Diego (LPD-22) embarked with F-35B, MV-22B, CH-53E, AH-1Z and UH-1Y.
Expanding Horizons
Talisman Sabre has seen significant expansion in the sheer reach of the exercise following introduction of operations in the Northern Territory in 2021, this year has set sights even further. Large scale flying activities are being conducted on Australia’s west coast in Western Australia with RAAF Bases Curtin (utilised in 2023) and Learmonth seeing flying activity. Currently off the coast in support of these activities are a pair of Carrier Strike Groups, with both the Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales (R09) and United States Navy USS George Washington (CVN-73) conducting flying operations.
In the nation’s south, the United States Air Force have based a single RC-135W ‘Joint Rivet’ electronic surveillance aircraft out of RAAF Base Edinburgh with the asset noted operating in the WA and NT region. Another first has seen Papua New Guinea’s being utilised as an exercise training area.
Over the coming weeks we plan to look further into the largest Exercise Talisman Sabre to date. The Aviation Studio would like to thank Defence Media for their continued support.
