Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Alfred Coffield | Lt. Donghyun Oh, assigned to Republic of Korea Navy Underwater Construction Team,...... read more read more
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The 37th annual Exercise Cobra Gold concluded Feb. 23, 2018, after partnering U.S., Republic of Korea and Royal Thai Navy underwater construction teams (UCT) for an exchange of techniques at the Royal Thai Navy Base in Sattahip, Thailand.
This year’s exercise marked the first multilateral UCT exercise between the three nations, and the first for Republic of Korea’s UCT.
“This is the first time ROK UCT has worked with U.S. and Thai UCT,” said Lt. Donghyun Oh, assigned to Republic of Korea Underwater Construction Team. “The Republic of Korea UCT was founded February 2017. This is the first ROK UCT deployment.”
The multilateral exercise between UCT units serves as a means to learn best practices and techniques, and plan future operations for the partnering nations.
“It’s the first multilateral exercise between UCTs where we work jointly, hand-in-hand to understand each other’s capabilities,” said Construction Mechanic 1st Class Matthew Ramirez, assistant officer in charge of Underwater Construction Team 2. “I think this partnership will help with future missions because if the Royal Thai Navy and the South Korean UCT know how we operate, then they will be able to seamlessly join our team and vice versa.”
Underwater Construction Team 2 trained with Royal Thai Navy and Republic of Korea divers to conduct pier assessments and hydrographic surveys of the DeLong and Thung Prong piers for the exercise. The goal of the inspection was to document the deterioration of each pier. In 2017 UCT 2 helped rebuild the Thung Prong Pier by placing sacrificial anodes, which are used to prevent the surface of metal from corroding, on the pier.
“The UCTs completely rebuilt Thung Prong in 2017, Ramirez said. They put 377 sacrificial anodes on the pier, and we are here to measure the rate of deterioration on those anodes. Since the pier was built, it has been used for: ammo offloads, mooring, getting supplies on and off the base and basically enabling the Royal Thai Navy to be a little bit more efficient.”
Underwater Construction Team 2 provides responsive inshore and underwater construction capabilities. UCT 2 is assigned to Commander, Task Force (CTF) 75, the primary expeditionary task force responsible for the planning and execution of coastal riverine operations, explosive ordnance disposal, diving engineering and construction, and underwater construction in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.
Cobra Gold 18 provides a venue for the United States, allied and partner nations to advance interoperability and increase partner capacity in planning executing complex and realistic multinational force and combined task force operations.
| Date Taken: | 02.28.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 02.28.2018 01:33 |
| Story ID: | 267444 |
| Location: | SATTAHIP, TH |
| Web Views: | 61 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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