30 April 2025
By his own reckoning, Gunner Matthew Sharp is the youngest soldier in Brisbane-based 20th Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery.
Exactly a year after his enlistment date, the 19-year-old was camped next to a Bushmaster protected mobility vehicle (PMV) with the rest of Bravo Troop, concealed in trees at the edge of Williamson Airfield in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area.
The Gold Coast teenager was taking part in his first major field exercise since initial training at Kapooka. He has spent much of the past year training to become an uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) operator. Now Gunner Sharp was counting down the days until his first ‘live’ flight.
He’s part of 131 Battery, one of three taking part in Exercise Chimera Walk, a two-week exercise to familiarise the regiment’s soldiers with the Integrator tactical UAS.
Gunner Sharp said it was something he had been looking forward to.
“It’s definitely very rewarding when you get that bird off the rails and everything goes right, all the boxes are checked and you see it shoot off into the sky,” Gunner Sharp said.
Once qualified the young gunner will receive the title of Aircraft Captain.
'It’s definitely very rewarding when you get that bird off the rails and everything goes right, all the boxes are checked and you see it shoot off into the sky.'
He said that meant crucial bragging rights on the home front with his mother, who was previously in the Air Force.
“I know she’s very proud. What we do is important and difficult,” Gunner Sharp said.
“We need to do our job well to help everyone else out. We’re the eyes of the Army.”
Gunner Sharp believes a fondness for gaming helped him become a UAS operator.
“The time and discipline you get from gaming, those long hours staring at the screen – concentrating – made the transition to doing this easier,” Gunner Sharp said.
And he’s confident piloting UAVs will lead to future opportunities.
“It’s one of the reasons I chose this job in the first place; there’s such a big future for drones,” he said.
With the regiment expecting to take delivery of additional Integrators before the end of the year, the ADF is looking for more operators.
Warrant Officer Class Two Marc Plant, from Army’s Aviation Command, said advanced classroom lessons and simulators had cut the time taken to train a UAS operator from one year to about six months.
