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Exercise Kangaroo was a
Exercise Kangaroo was a joint warfare
Joint warfare is a military doctrine which places priority on the integration of the various service branches of a state's armed forces into one unified command. Joint warfare is in essence a form of combined arms warfare on a larger, national ...
exercise that was held by the Australian Defence Force
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is the military organisation responsible for the defence of the Commonwealth of Australia and its national interests. It consists of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Australian Army, Royal Australian Air Fo ...
in the 1970s and 1980s.
The first iteration of Exercise Kangaroo took place in 1974. The military units involved included the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (R21)
HMAS ''Melbourne'' (R21) was a ''Majestic''-class light aircraft carrier operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from 1955 until 1982, and was the third and final conventional aircraft carrier to serve in the RAN. ''Melbourne'' was th ...
, which took part in the exercise in the Coral Sea
The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down the Australian northeast coast. Most of it is protected by the Fren ...
, before returning to Sydney.Cassells, ''The Capital Ships'', p. 86 In October 1976, ''Melbourne'' participated in Exercise Kangaroo II, before sailing to her namesake city for the carrier's 21st birthday celebrations, then returning to Sydney on 5 November.
The 1989 iteration of Exercise Kangaroo was the largest military exercise to have been undertaken in Australia during peacetime up to that time. It involved 28,000 Australian and American military personnel. The exercise next took place in 1992, with over 12,000 Australian and American personnel taking part.
When Lieutenant General John Sanderson
Lieutenant General John Murray Sanderson, (born 4 November 1940) is a retired senior Australian Army officer and vice-regal representative. He served as Force Commander of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia from 1992 to 199 ...
became Commander Joint Forces Australia (CJFA) in the early 1990s, his main task was to plan the Kangaroo series of exercises. Sanderson said that when the Vice Chief of Defence Force acted as CJFA in Ex Kangaroo 1989 he could not exercise command properly because he did not have a suitable command support system.Horner, Making the Australian Defence Force," Oxford University Press, 2001, 123–4. Exercises Kangaroo 89 and '92 showed the need for the co-location of the joint headquarters. At one stage of Kangaroo '92 in the space of 30 minutes, two ships, one with a battalion of infantry embarked, were 'sunk' for lack of air cover.
See also
* Exercise Talisman Saber *Exercise Zapad-81
Exercise Zapad-81 (russian: Запад-81, lit=West-81) was the largest military exercise ever to be carried out by the Soviet Union, according to NATO and US sources. It was conducted from September 4, 1981 and lasted approximately eight days, i ...
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