Australia — FCU‑5 Troops wrap up a successful MEAO deployment

Almost 120 Aus­tralian Defence Force mem­bers arrive home in Aus­tralia today (Thurs­day, 15 Decem­ber 2011) after a sev­en-month deploy­ment to the Mid­dle East Area of Oper­a­tions (MEAO) with Force Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Unit Five (FCU‑5).

The per­son­nel are pre­dom­i­nant­ly from the Townsville-based 3 Com­bat Sig­nal Reg­i­ment, with ele­ments also drawn from 17 units across the ADF. 

Com­mand­ing Offi­cer of FCU‑5, Lieu­tenant Colonel Dan Ben­nett said the deploy­ment, which includ­ed active ser­vice on both Oper­a­tion KRUGER and Oper­a­tion SLIPPER, was a success.

“FCU‑5 is a joint unit that was able to utilise the com­bined skills and expe­ri­ences of Navy, Army and Air Force per­son­nel to pro­vide Joint Task Force 633 (JTF633) with nation­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (CIS),” Lieu­tenant Colonel Ben­nett said.

The mis­sion of FCU‑5 was to pro­vide Australia’s JTF 633 with com­mu­ni­ca­tions capa­bil­i­ty through­out the MEAO. This includ­ed the coor­di­na­tion of coali­tion CIS ser­vices, which enabled nation­al com­mand and Aus­tralian Defence Force (ADF) inter­op­er­abil­i­ty with coali­tion partners.

Dur­ing their deploy­ment, FCU‑5 per­son­nel pro­vid­ed 24-hour, 7‑days-a-week (24/7) CIS sup­port to three For­ward Oper­at­ing Bases and up to five Patrol Bases in Uruz­gan Province.

FCU‑5 also devel­oped and pro­vid­ed CIS solu­tions in sup­port of the ADF’s Heron detach­ment at Kan­da­har Air Field.

“I’m very proud of my team, they have met every chal­lenge head on and have rep­re­sent­ed the ADF as a pro­fes­sion­al and adap­tive force,” Lieu­tenant Colonel Ben­nett said.

“They are hand­ing over to Force Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Unit Six (FCU‑6) robust and reli­able CIS net­works which are agile enough to meet the needs of chang­ing oper­a­tional situation.”

FCU‑5 hand­ed over con­trol to FCU‑6 at the Trans­fer of Author­i­ty parade at Al Min­had Air­base, in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, on Tues­day (13 Decem­ber 2011). At the cer­e­mo­ny, a num­ber of per­son­nel were award­ed Com­man­der JTF633 Com­men­da­tions in recog­ni­tion of their excep­tion­al ser­vice dur­ing their deployment. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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