Exercise Pitch Black 2024 highlights
Exercise Pitch Black is back and it is bigger than ever, with more countries participating in the exercise. The Darwin-based exercise allows both pilots and crew members more realistic scenarios while practising their tactics, also providing more air space for aerial manoeuvres.
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00:00Exercise pitch black is something that we participate in every two years.
00:27It's especially important to the RSAF because of the training that it allows us to have.
00:31The airspace is vast, it's more than 10 times the size that we have back in Singapore.
00:35And the aircraft that's participating for this year, there's up to 140 aircraft.
00:40So it brings in the complexity in the scenarios and just the value of our operational training and value that we could get.
00:47Definitely 100% for all the refuelling.
00:50We've managed to get all the contacts that they require, all the fuel that they need.
00:54Weather will always be a challenge with some clear air turbulence and whatnot in the air.
00:59However, this can be managed within the crew.
01:02If we deem there is an unsafe situation, we can ask for the fighters to take a break before we continue with the tanking.
01:09In exercise pitch black, we exercise both offensive counter air and defensive counter air missions.
01:15So in this particular exercise, we will amass our forces before we push out there
01:20and simulate as if we are going to enter the adversary country to treat their air-to-air targets or air-to-air threats
01:28before going there to service our air-to-ground targets.
01:31Yeah, so we have some missions with them during planning phase and execution phase.
01:36We work with them. They are really wise, skilled and nice.
01:40So it was really nice to fly with them.
01:43And we had the opportunity to share information and experience about all the kinds of missions we are flying here
01:49like offensive kind of missions or defensive kind of missions.
01:52So we simulate that we have to attack another place or enemy or we simulate that we are being attacked
01:58and we have to work together in order to defend our land.
02:02I feel like volunteering in exercise pitch black because I find this exercise meaningful
02:07and since we have various aircraft from different countries as well
02:12it will be very interesting and fun for me to come here to showcase our capability as a tanker.