127 Exercise Pred Run Exercise Predator Run was extremely ambitious, with units planned to be staging out of Howard Springs, Larrakeyah, the common user facility at East Arm and 5 RAR. 103 was just a small cog in a very large machine that included involvement from the US Marines as well as the Pilipino and Malaysian Armies. It was also the time for 8/12 to come forward and prove that they could perform in a Littoral environment, just 7 months after the Brigade Commander’s visit. In the lead up to Ex Pred Run, 103 Battery was called upon to be the guinea pig as the battery to deploy onto an island. This time was fraught with uncertainty, dates kept getting pushed left and right and the procedure for actually deploying was still to be determined. In the end, civilian barges, the Jane Virgo and the Cooma Cooma were contracted to act as stand-ins for the lack of amphibious vehicles. 102 BTY experimented with using the PMV and Manitou as Gun Tractors to manoeuvre the guns onto the barges. Tape was marked out across the Regiment and 103 drivers practiced meticulously as they backed guns onto the mock-up ships, countless meetings were called to discuss the implementation of littoral operations and the fight for information was an uphill battle. Right up to the start date of the exercise there was little to no information available about how the guns were actually going to operate. Plans were formed, scrapped and replanned in the space of mere hours. At the mercy of Brigade, it was decided that the guns were to deploy to Melville Island. Room on the barges became an issue as the HX-77 and the M777 were exceedingly large on such small scale barges. 103 Battery weren’t the only ones destined to deploy on the island, however, and spots on the larger barges were filling up quick. The Battery had to be prepared to deploy using only a troop variant PMV, in case space wasn’t going to be available. To get around this, it was decided that a Tilly would be used.
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