America's North Shore Journal

United States forces in the Pacific are cur­rently engaged in an exer­cise titled Cobra Gold 2009, being held Feb­ru­ary 4–17, 2009. This exer­cise has been held for the last 28 years, and involves the mil­i­taries of Thai­land, Sin­ga­pore, Japan, Indone­sia, and the United States.

Hosted by the King­dom of Thai­land, Cobra Gold involves com­mand post exer­cises, filed train­ing and a vari­ety of human­i­tar­ian assis­tance projects.

The U.S. Embassy in Thai­land describes the exercise:

The exer­cise will com­bine Thai, U.S., and Sin­ga­porean armed forces in a coali­tion task force head­quar­ters staff exer­cise. Thai­land, Sin­ga­pore, Japan, and the United States will con­duct field train­ing exer­cises. Thai­land, The United States, Sin­ga­pore, Japan, and Indone­sia will par­tic­i­pate in an exer­cise designed around the United Nations multi-national peace sup­port oper­a­tions sce­nario. Thai­land, the United States, Sin­ga­pore, Indone­sia, and Japan will par­tic­i­pate in human­i­tar­ian and civic assis­tance projects, designed to improve qual­ity of life and local infra­struc­ture for the host Thai people.

In addi­tion to the five main par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, the royal Thai gov­ern­ment has invited sev­eral other nations to par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous roles dur­ing the exer­cise. The fol­low­ing coun­tries have been invited: Aus­tralia, Brunei, France, Italy, United King­dom, Bangladesh, India, Philip­pines, Peo­ples Repub­lic of Cam­bo­dia, China, Canada, Ger­many, South Korea, Laos, Nepal, Pak­istan, Viet­nam, and Mongolia.

Today's Blog­gers' Round­table was with LTG Ben­jamin Mixon, U.S. Army Pacific Com­mand. He dis­cussed Cobra Gold 2009 in detail, and placed it in a regional con­text. A num­ber of nations, includ­ing China and Viet­nam, are observing.

One of the high­lights of the exer­cise will be a com­bined arms Marine amphibi­ous com­bat land­ing, involv­ing some 3,000 U.S. Marines in coop­er­a­tion with Thai Marines. Gen­eral Mixon pointed out that this serves to sharpen skill sets for major com­bat oper­a­tions as well as demon­strate the abil­ity of the United States to project power in the region.

Planned ele­ments of Cobra Gold will take place across the King­dom of Thai­land, from the south­east near Cam­bo­dia to the north­west near Burma. Naval and Marine sea borne ele­ments will take place in the vicin­ity of the city of Utaphao.

The Gen­eral cited the New York Army National Guard for pro­vid­ing a bat­tal­ion of troops, the 2^nd of the 108^th, as the Army ground force. He also pointed out that a pla­toon of Stryk­ers from the 2^nd of the 23^rd in Ft. Lewis, Wash­ing­ton, were also involved. There is also an A Team of Spe­cial Forces troops deployed to train the Thais.

The Thais have expressed inter­est in counter-IED train­ing, Mixon said, and counter insur­gency oper­a­tions. The Gen­eral does not see the U.S. becom­ing involved in COIN in Thai­land as we have in the Philippines.

A total of around 7,500 Amer­i­cans are involved, from all branches of the military.

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