The skies over Salisbury Plain were filled with parachutes on Monday morning (30th March) as Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade took part in the largest mass parachute drop in 11 years.
The first man out of the aircraft was the Brigade Commander, Brigadier Ed Cartwright, who led a further 273 soldiers from Colchester-based 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, in an exercise to demonstrate the airborne capability jointly provided by the Army and the Royal Air Force.
The first wave of the new A400M aircraft dropped 24 tonnes of supplies needed by the soldiers to sustain themselves.
This was followed by three more A400Ms carrying 274 paratroopers who were dropped in four waves.
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The soldiers left their base in Colchester at 2100hrs on Sunday and moved to RAF Brize Norton where all the pre-flight checks and briefings were carried out.
The aircraft took off in the dawn light and practised flying in formation and the drop took place exactly as planned at 0900hrs on Fox Covert Dropping Zone.
One of the main objectives of this exercise was to familiarise pilots, crew and paratroopers with the new aircraft that replaced the faithful HC130 Hercules, which was retired in 2023.
The paras exited at two-second intervals rather than the operational one-second gap and jumped from 800 feet, with the aircraft separated by just 40 seconds.
After arrival in the Drop Zone, the first Paras secured the DZ for the remaining soldiers to arrive.
Mortar, General Purpose Machine Gun (SF), and drone detachments deployed around the perimeter.
After forming up, there was a 10-mile march in two hours carrying some 80lbs of equipment to the notional border that they were sent in to secure.
A smiling Brigadier Cartwright declared the exercise a success: "We got 274 soldiers and 24 tonnes of equipment delivered in under 30 minutes," he said.
"The jump was a milestone in developing the Joint Air Task Force concept and we are a relevant and important capability."
On a personal note, he added that it was one of his worst jumps ever.
