Photo By Staff Sgt. Justin Huffty | Subject matter experts discuss civil-military coordination during the academics...... read more read more
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Over 100 minds from nine different nations came together for the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response academics, tabletop exercise and senior leader seminar portion of Exercise Cobra Gold 2018 at the Royal Thai Armed Forces Strategic Studies Center in the Chonburi province, Kingdom of Thailand, Feb. 14, 2018.
CG18 is an annual exercise conducted in the Kingdom of Thailand held from Feb. 13-23 with seven full participating nations.
Participants of the HADR were invited from several different nations including the Kingdom of Thailand, the United States, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia and the Republic of Korea as well as numerous civil organizations.
The five-day discussions were kicked off with an academics portion lead by subject matter experts from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Association for Southeast Asian Nations Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management, Singapore’s Changi Regional HADR Coordination Centre, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), International Committee of the Red Cross, and Malaysian Armed Forces.
“It’s the first year that Cobra Gold has included HADR,” said Ken Hume, the Asia Pacific signal relations coordinator for the IFRC. “ What is great about it is it is engaging the military with the humanitarian act.”
“This is helping the military understand the parameters, the policy frame works, the principals by which we work, and of course the coordination mechanisms for civil-military coordination,” said Hume, who is one of the subject matter experts speaking during the event. “There is a whole series of exercises run in the region which do involve this.”
The group discussed past disasters and how they affect the communities of the affected areas, as well as the actions and challenges of both civilian and military organizations in those times of crisis.
“The senior leaders seminar is a unique opportunity to present relevant HADR challenges to a multitude of senior officers and learn differing perspectives on response processes and systems,” said Joseph Martin, the director of the Department of Defense Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance. “Not only do the participants learn from the instructional nature of the material – which is all very realistic –they also learn from each other.”
The academic portion of the HADR breaks down events that will be covered by the fictional tabletop scenario portion, where participants will go over a course of action in the event a disaster were to strike.
“It will walk us through three moves,” said Hume. “In the first move the players, which is mainly the military here and internationally military, will be asked at what coordination instructions they expect to see and how they will fit into that coordination structure and then through successive moves we will move through the responsive phase itself.”
“As one of the longest running events in the Indo-Pacific region, Cobra Gold is an ideal learning and training environment as disaster response is almost always a multi-nation event,” said Martin. “As disasters are prevalent in many of the participant nations, the opportunity to meet the key players now will be critical to the inevitable response.”
CG18, in its 37th iteration, advances regional security and ensure effective responses to regional crises by bringing together a robust multinational force to address shared goals and security commitments in the Indo-Pacific region.
“These are really valuable opportunities and I’m glad it’s now included in Cobra Gold,” said Hume.
| Date Taken: | 02.14.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 02.16.2018 22:56 |
| Story ID: | 266270 |
| Location: | TH |
| Web Views: | 259 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Cobra Gold 18: First discussions on humanitarian assistance and disaster response begins, by SSgt Justin Huffty, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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