Defence Team News: HMCS Vancouver completes historic rearmament in Australia
Video / December 02, 2024
Transcript
I’m Commander Tyson Bergmann, Captain of HMCS VANCOUVER, alongside here today in Broome for our forward rearm. So, right now we're just unloading one of the live missiles. We just offloaded all of the empty canisters for the missiles as well as any spent main armament that we fired during exercises. And this will be going on throughout the day until we're completed later on before we depart.
Commander Matthew Wernas
This is quite a significant day for VLS (Vertical Launch System) rearming here in northern Australia. It's the first time a rearming of VLS has occurred here in the port of Broome, and it's only the second time a nation outside of Australia has conducted VLS activities in Australia.
Commander Tyson Bergmann
The whole process started about nine months ago. We knew HMCS VANCOUVER was going to be conducting a bunch of exercises on route to our deployment for OP HORIZON. And we knew that we would have to do a forward rearm for any missiles or weapons that we expended during those exercises. Discussions at that point, all the way up to, and including, direct communications between the Australian Chief of the Defence Staff as well as the Canadian, resulted in that we would use Australia as a proof of concept to forward rearm one of our Canadian vessels. While getting the missiles into Australia was primarily handled by the Canadian Air Force on their Globemaster. Once the munitions arrived in country, that was mainly handled by the Australian Defence Force to get them transported to where we are today.
Commander Matthew Wernas
This type of activity, for the Canadians, helps VANCOUVER remain forward deployed, which means she doesn't have to return to ports closer to home and therefore remain on station longer.