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Service members of the U.S. Armed Forces, the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces, the Federal Republic of Germany Armed Forces and other participating nations, to include Mauritania, Canada, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Tunisia and the Netherlands, commenced Exercise African Lion 16, April 18, 2016.
African Lion is an annual joint combined training exercise that allows participating nations to improve interoperability between forces and to demonstrate the strong military bond that exists between them.
“It gives us the opportunity to get out of our own country and take part in this multinational exercise to acquire different knowledge and experiences from our other partner nations,” said Maj. Angel Carricondo, Spanish Legion.
The exercise consists of command post exercise activities and peace support operations training that will help to promote a mutual understanding of each nation’s tactics, techniques and procedures. This helps enhance security capabilities and gives the partner nations the opportunity to see training from a different point of view.
“The classroom training we’re conducting is for peacetime enforcement operations. It focuses on border security operations as well as detainee operations,” said Marine Capt. Thomas Willard, Bravo Company Commander, Joint Battalion. “We’re also getting input from the other nations on how they conduct those activities in their countries.”
Bringing different nations together to share ideas and different methods on training exercises will help them work together effectively in addressing issues and challenges that arise in the future, as well as improve their own operations.
“There are many different ways to take care of the same objective,” said Army Spc. John Oh, military policeman, 977th Military Police Company, 97th Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade. “We have to be open minded and think outside the box at times with training.”
Being open to new ideas from partner nations will help to promote cooperation in the future and U.S. Africa Command and Marine Forces Africa are committed to maintaining strong military relationships with those partnering nations.
“The experience level that some of the other nations have in these specific operations is much more extensive than our experience,” said Willard. Knowing how close of a relationship that is between the U.S. and participating nations for establishing anti-terrorism forces as well as regional security is an important part of the exercise.
Exercise African Lion 16 reinforces lessons learned from previous African Lion exercises and also provides a foundation and structure for future military relationships between the participating nations.
| Date Taken: | 04.20.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 04.29.2016 12:50 |
| Story ID: | 196850 |
| Location: | AGADIR, MA |
| Web Views: | 156 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Exercise African Lion 16, by Sgt Melissa Martens, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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