Day 95:Sydney harbour

Sydney Harbour

Royal Marines in Sydney

In the middle of Sydney Harbour, Royal Marines from 42 Commando descended on an unoccupied passenger ferry for intensive maritime anti-terrorism training. The simulation, part of Exercise Talisman Sabre 25, came together with units from Australia, the United States, Japan, and Singapore.

Within direct sight of the Sydney Opera House, Commandos gave unsuspecting tourists a front-row seat to this eye-catching exercise, stress-testing their specialist boarding skills — an often dangerous and complex task for Royal Marines.

The objective is to board and seize control of suspicious vessels. And the Royal Marines of 42 Commando, based in Plymouth, are no strangers to this kind of operation.

The squad has perfected their skills in hunting down smugglers, terrorists, and pirates across the globe, often fighting and manoeuvring against the tight confines of boats and ships. It was these skills that helped score the squad a recent win: seizing one and a half tonnes of illegal narcotics, worth £30 million, in the Middle East.

The exercise in Sydney Harbour concluded with the successful recapture of the New South Wales passenger ferry, with the help of specialist raiding craft, US Black Hawk helicopters, and US Special Forces Chinooks.

Led by the Royal Australian Navy, Talisman Sabre 25 was the host nation’s largest military exercise to date.

In the Oceanic seas, from Darwin to Papua New Guinea, close to 35,000 personnel from 19 different nations assembled to engage in a series of exercises designed to enhance multi-domain war-fighting and international cooperation.

HMS Prince of Wales led the UK’s naval input and worked alongside USS George Washington, even welcoming the US Marine Corps’ MV-22 Osprey aboard its sprawling flight deck.

The successful multinational exercise was a powerful demonstration of the UK and its global partners’ commitment to the continued security of the Indo-Pacific region and the rules-based international system.