U.S. military exercises in April and May

06/14/13
Latin America and the Caribbean
U.S. Policy, Military Exercises

Belize

  • On May 15th, 24 members of the Belize National Coast Guard and 5 members of the Belizean Anti-Drug Unit (ADU) graduated from a Special Warfare Operations Course. This 5-week training course, supervised and conducted in Belize by Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen of the U.S. Navy, “covered Navigation, Small-Boat Handing, Communications, Board Search and Seizure, Vectoring, Radar and GPS Operation, Weapon-Handling Skills, and Waterborne Techniques.”

  • “Approximately 90 airmen deployed from Hurlburt Field, Florida, are building school structures from the ground up throughout Belize as part of an exercise known as New Horizons,” reports the U.S. 12th Air Force. “The first of the airmen assigned to the 823rd Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers, commonly known as RED HORSE, began to arrive in Belize in February to begin pre-construction activities and set up logistics for the three-month training exercise that started April 1 and is scheduled to run through the end of June.”

Belize, El Salvador, Panama

  • “From April through June 2013, U.S. military personnel will be in Belize, El Salvador, and Panama to conduct comprehensive humanitarian civic assistance exercises,” reports U.S. Southern Command. “As part of the Beyond the Horizon and New Horizons exercise programs, troops specializing in engineering, construction and health care are providing needed services to communities while receiving valuable deployment training and building important relationships with partner nations.”

Brazil

  • On May 20-22 Brazil and the United States held their 29th annual army-to-army staff talks. These meetings “help strengthen professional partnerships and increase interaction between armies” and often result in “various events, training, exercises and exchanges together.” reports U.S. Army South, a component of U.S. Southern Command. This year, “the two delegations drafted a list of 29 Agreed to Actions (ATAs) that covered a wide range of professional exchanges designed to improve the working relationship between the two armies.”

Caribbean Regional

  • As part of a “a test to see if the relatively low-cost drone, which runs on battery power, could be an alternative to manned aircraft such as the P-3 Orion, which requires a crew of seven and guzzles fuel,” reports the Miami Herald, naval officers practiced launching the Puma, a waterproof 13 pound drone that they hope will help in drug-smuggling detection. U.S. forces are employing at least 10 Pumas within the Central American and Caribbean waters. The exercise also involved a 321-foot helium-filled blimp, the TIF-25K Aerostat, also to be used over Caribbean waters to detect drug smuggling ships.

  • “Tradewinds 2013 was a U.S. Southern Command-sponsored training exercise conducted in the Caribbean Basin which focused on improving cooperation and security in the region,” reports U.S. Southern Command. “The joint and interagency exercise was held in St. Lucia from May 20 – June 6. The exercise includes participants from the U.S. military and U.S. law enforcement agencies who are joined counterparts from 14 partner nations, primarily from the Caribbean Basin.” Adds another Southcom release, “Uniformed service members and maritime police officers from four partner nations bolstered their maritime enforcement capabilities in a live-fire gunnery exercise off the coast of Saint Lucia during Tradewinds 2013.”

Colombia, Guatemala

  • Civil affairs officers from U.S. Southern Command and Special Operations Command South worked “to develop a strategy to increase Guatemala’s Civil Affairs capacity to disrupt transnational organized criminal activities in minimally governed areas” during a Civil Affairs Subject Matter Expert Exchange (SMEE) that took place in Guatemala City from April 23-25 between the United States, Colombia and Guatemala. The SMEE, led by Colombia, “was designed to provide the Civil Affairs representatives with a forum for sharing best practices in Civil Military Operations (CMO) and Civil Affairs Operations (CAO) and to discuss future CA focused engagement opportunities to complement U.S. Southern Command efforts in Countering Transnational Organized Crime (CTOC).”

El Salvador

  • Task Force Jaguar, organized by the Southern Command’s U.S. Army South, completed a mass casualty exercise in El Salvador in April. The activity took place before the launch of the Beyond the Horizon 2013 humanitarian exercise. “The mass casualty exercise is designed to simulate the stress caused during a real crisis” and “was just one step in the validation process required for the unit to maintain operations” in El Salvador. Additionally, “over the course of two days, safety, personnel recovery, and force protection inspectors from Army South evaluated the safety measures and tactics employed by the task force.”

  • Beyond the Horizon will operate in El Salvador until June. An Army press release describes it as “a joint and combined field training humanitarian exercise in which U.S. active duty, National Guard, and Reserve servicemembers specializing in engineering, construction and health care, working along-side partner nation personnel, provide much-needed services to communities in need while receiving valuable deployment training and building important relationships with partner nations.”

  • An April 16th Army release noted that since their arrival in El Salvador on the 30th of March, the Beyond the Horizon group’s work “constructing schools and latrines on three sites” is on track.

  • On February 28th, eleven Salvadoran airmen returned to San Salvador after being deployed to Afghanistan by the United States. During their time in Afghanistan they worked as aviation advisers and International Security Assistance Force liaison officers. “The training that the Salvadoran airmen went through is similar to what U.S. service members receive in preparation for deployment. The Salvadorans also received psychological and medical evaluations and other exams to ensure they were fit for a combat mission” http://www.dvidshub.net/news/105377/us-el-salvador-partnership-leads-mis...

Guatemala, Honduras

  • Following the completion of three weeks of “joint training and partnership building” in Guatemala, the Southern Partnership Station 2013 naval exercise moved to Honduras in April. SPS 2013 is working to train armed forces in “the areas of explosive ordnance disposal, land navigation, live-fire exercises, river operations and arrest procedures.”

Honduras

  • Joint Task Force-Bravo, a U.S. Southern Command component based at the Soto Cano air base near Comayagua, Honduras, reports that it “partnered with four female Honduran National Police Officers, Community Engagement Section, to mentor young women aged 17-27 at the Arts for Humanity Women’s Leadership Center, as part of a commitment to assist in the development of partnership capacity in El Socorro, Honduras, April 18. Joint Task Force-Bravo’s Army Forces Battalion, Engineer Section and Medical Element taught classes on leadership and ethics, basic first aid, and conducted a technical engineering assessment of the center’s infrastructure.”

  • On April 23rd, Joint Task Force-Bravo’s mobile surgical team (MST) worked with a group of Honduran surgeons at the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa. This medical surgical team works with local surgeons in La Paz, Comayagua, and Tegucigalpa on a regular basis, helping to train medical students as part of Medial Readiness Training Exercise (MEDRETE) programs. According to a Southern Command release, “the surgical MEDRETES allows the MST to exercise their surgical skills while providing relief to the saturated medical staff at Hospital Escuela.”

  • As part of a May 6th MEDRETE in the Cuesta de la Virgen community, members of Joint Task Force-Bravo worked with the Honduran Ministry of Health and Honduran military personnel to provide medical attention to more than 500 residents. In addition to teaching about preventative medicine, nutrition, and proper hygiene, “villagers were provided the opportunity to meet with a nurse, dentist or medical provider depending on their needs to receive assistance which ranged from routine medical checkups, basic immunizations, deworming medicine for children, tooth extractions and gynecological services.”

  • “Seventeen service members from Joint Task Force-Bravo were recalled and transported to Puerto Castilla to join the Honduran Comision Permanente de Contingencias (COPECO), during a Central America Survey and Assessment Team (C-SAT) exercise, May 15-16,” reports the Honduras-based U.S. Southern Command component. “The team partnered with COPECO to run through a simulated hurricane landfall disaster scenario and determine the actions each agency would accomplish during a disaster.”

Mexico

  • The Mexican Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) announced on May 9th that Mexico’s Army will participate in a joint training exercise with the United States and Canada. Ardent Sentry, an exercise that U.S. Northern Command holds each year in the United States, will help develop a joint action plan in case of any disaster in the area of the borders between the countries. The training, which will cover appropriate responses to any biological, chemical, radiological and natural disasters that could potentially happen, will take place in Florida, South Carolina, and Montana.

Panama

  • U.S. Army South marked the official start of Beyond the Horizon-Panama 2013 during an April 17 ceremony at Fort Sherman, once a U.S. Army base near Colón, Panama. “U.S. military engineers and medical professionals arrived to conduct real-world training while providing needed services to communities throughout the country,” reads a U.S. Army South release.

  • As part of Beyond the Horizon 2013, 28 U.S. Air Force airmen from the 203rd “Redhorse” Squadron, 192nd Fighter Wing, an Air Guard unit out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia and the 200th Squadron, 179th Fighter Wing, out of Mansfield, Ohio, are working with Panamanian personnel to build a health center in the rural area of Escobal, Panama. Upon completion of the health center, the airmen will build a dormitory for employees.

  • In April, as part of a three-day MEDRETE, approximately 50 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel provided medical, dental, and humanitarian, and veterinarian services to the residents of Cerro Plata, Panama. This MEDRETE is another component of the Beyond the Horizons 2013 exercise, which will take place until August. Army South reports that these programs “consist of a team of military medical and dental professionals who work in austere areas to gain valuable military experience, while also providing medical services to people in need of treatment.”

  • As part of Beyond the Horizon 2013, a U.S. Army officer assigned to Task Force Panama conducted a training session for some members of the National Air and Navy Service of Panama (SENAN). The session included training in “the proper use of under-carriage vehicle inspection mirrors and metal detecting wands for use on individuals” which “will add another layer of security to the force protection the SENAN already have in place.”

  • In Colón, Panama on April 30th members of the Rhode Island National Guard visited Hospital Colon and met with the hospital’s medical director. During the meeting, the two parties worked “to sustain a cooperative relationship with the local hospital to ensure appropriate medical treatment of U.S. and Panamanian security forces operating” in and around the area through the Beyond the Horizon-Panama 2013 program.

Research for, and some drafting of, this post was carried out by WOLA Intern Laura Fontaine.