Gibraltar's tunnel vision

Everyone knows about Gibraltar, don't they? For civvies it means having your sunglasses pinched by the apes. Matelots associate it with a run ashore and a last chance to get ship-shape before sailing off to the four corners of the globe. The Army will tell you of its strategic importance and the RAF know it for the 120 degree turn you have to make to approach a narrow landing corridor squeezed between Spanish air space, and the imposing bulk of the rock itself.

But Gibraltar has another role. It boasts a diverse suite of training facilities relevant to today's triservice, operational needs. Almost every inch of its five-and-a-half square miles (14 square kilometres) has something to offer either above, on, or below the waterline.

Its warm waters and generally favourable weather are ideal for maritime training. The Submarine Parachute Assistance Group frequently drop in - literally. Teams of RN Clearance divers, and other specialists regularly train there. Submarines use the deep waters to trial new sonar systems and ships' weapons officers know that the seas around Gibraltar make a perfect place to polish up with a bit of last minute live firing practice and operational sea training.

Yet Commander of British Forces, Commodore Matt Parr feels that, on top of all this, there is still more to offer:

"Let's be clear", he says. "PJHQ (Permanent Joint Headquarters) funds us to be a Forward Mounting Base, that's our principal role. But alongside that we do provide a lot of training for the Army and the Navy. The RAF don't do much training here."

But maybe the RAF Regiment could. With a busy RAF airstrip hosting plenty of commercial traffic, and excellent infantry and camp protection training opportunities just a couple of miles up the road at Buffadero Training Centre, all the necessary ingredients to hone force and camp protection are on tap.

No strangers to the quality of Gibraltar's training facilities are the Sappers. They have a long association with the rock. The Royal Engineers regiment was formed here in the 18th century, and much of the town has been built by them. Buffadero Training Centre provides a perfect testing ground for assessing combat engineering students' abilities to put up Sangars, and produce practical plans for building camps in hostile terrain.

Buffadero Training Centre

Buffadero is situated on the southernmost tip of Gibraltar. It is a compact facility, just 37 acres (15 hectares), ideal for platoon size training. It boasts two live firing ranges, an obstacle course, a CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) testing shed and the jewel in the crown - the village. This is a collection of houses, and other buildings, some of which have been given Middle East style flat roofs, which allows for extensive FIBUA (fighting in a built up area) exercises.

The rocky ground is covered with a tangle of shrubs and robust vegetation giving patrolling troops something of a taste of the terrain they may face in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lieutenant Daysan Pozo of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment has, like many of his colleagues deployed to Afghanistan, and can't praise the FIBUA training at Buffadero enough:

"The ground and cover here is very like Afghanistan. Often you don't know you are near the enemy until you are on top of them," he said.

A bonus is the bulk of the 1400ft (427m) rock looming over Buffadero. The upper rock enables infantry to conduct night-time patrols. Observational points can be established from the old gun emplacements adding an extra threat for platoon commanders to negotiate. Sergeant-Major Jackson of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment feels that regular infantry could benefit from Buffadero:

"The exercises you can set here are only as limited as the CO's (Commanding Officer's) imagination," he said.

Sappers

Captain Jamie Smith (RE) had just finished putting a team of 25 engineers through their paces at Buffadero:

"Gibraltar is an excellent training facility and the guys have got a lot out of being here. For one of their tests they have to work out how they can move things around to fit in and sort out problems such as what would you have physically do to this ground to fit in a camp to house 250 men."

And within weeks of completing their training, there is every chance that they could be deployed and doing it for real.

After this the sappers get to use Gibraltar's other facilities to bolster their training:

"We send them down to the port and to the airport to recce the assets. We brought this training in because it's what they will be doing in Iraq and in Afghanistan," said Captain Smith. "There is a big requirement for guys to be able to assess infrastructure and report back on capability.

"The sorts of things they need to report on are the quality of the port. Is it in a good position? Is it being run efficiently and what sort of ships could it cope with and how many? Are the workforce turning up on time, does it have cranes?"

Tunnels: BATUS to The Future

The Sappers also get a look around some of the Rock's 35 miles (56km) of tunnels, mostly hewn out of the limestone by their regimental predecessors:

"Partly it's to instil a sense of the Royal Engineer Corps tradition, but it's mainly to impress upon them the scale of the operation and to make them realise that they could face similar problems in their careers where they are asked to come up with solutions to unusual problems," said Captain Smith.

Fighting in tunnels and caves is a possibility today's troops in Afghanistan and Iraq need to be ready for. Not only are settlements there sometimes connected by tunnels from inside houses, but the narrow, winding streets themselves often resemble tunnels. Such is the requirement for this kind of training that the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Canada has started to create tunnel environments by joining empty containers together. It may not be feasible to use Gibraltar's tunnels to train troops in bulk, but they can be used to train the trainers.

Adventurous Training

As a well earned closer to all the hard work, Captain Smith's engineers finish off with two days of Adventurous Training (AT):

"I'm delighted to see the training capacity is near to full all year round," said CBF Commodore Parr.

"It's a good way for Defence to get maximum value out of Gib. Troops go home with a renewed sense that the Armed Forces are prepared to invest in them. That must be good for retention."

Captain Smith certainly feels his engineers have enjoyed good value for money:

"It would be hard to find such a wide range of facilities, the range, the port, the tunnels and the AT opportunities in one place anywhere else. All of which means that the guys have been able to spend more of their time training rather than in the back of an Army truck."

It's a back of a fag packet estimate but he believes it was cheaper for them to train in Gibraltar than to achieve the same in the UK... and they got the AT thrown in as well.

This article is taken from the December 2008 edition of Defence Focus.