Photo By Master Sgt. Andrew Jackson | Hawaii National Guard Soldiers and Airmen participate in a joint military operation...... read more read more
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“Separate but equal”- That could have been the theme of Gema Bhakti (GB20) 2020. Gema Bhakti is a Hawaii National Guard (HING) State Partnership Program (SPP), Indo-Pacific Command (INDO-PACOM), and Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) military planning exercise. This year’s distinctly different iteration of GB was largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant that the participants had to be socially distanced but also held the training, Team meetings and briefings virtually, via video teleconference (VTC).
GB20 is a staff exercise where representatives from all branches of the U.S. and Indonesian militaries participate in the Hawaii National Guard SPP led event. The SPP is a joint Department of Defense security cooperation program, managed and administered by the National Guard Bureau, executed and coordinated by the geographic Combatant Commands with personnel provided by the National Guard of the respective partner states. Hawaii National Guard has been SPP partners with Indonesia since 2006.
Rather than being all together in a single location attending briefings and holding breakout sessions, the military staffs were in multiple locations in the continental United States, Hawaii and Indonesia. They all participated in VTCs and shared presentations and other documents on a secure file share. The combined staffs from C1 (Personnel) to C9 (Civil Affairs) tasked to plan responses to a humanitarian disaster during a global pandemic.
“This year one of our biggest challenges was being proficient in Teams,” said Lt. Col. Brandon Torres, Hawaii National Guard Joint Staff. “In beginning we were trying to be collaborative in a system where not everyone can see the same document. We were editing and revising documents over email, we had a better technology and by the end of the exercise, we were using it.”
The overall participation in this years (GB) was dramatically less for several reasons but the main one was that many of the normal participants were involved in response to the real-world pandemic response that is affecting the world. Travel to either country was also not an option due to the transpacific travel moratorium and quarantine restrictions.
“Because of COVID, we had to drastically reduce our footprint and we utilized our HING joint staff,” said Lt. Col. Torres. “We only had ten staff members participating. They were released from their duty day (HING’s response to COVID) to drive to an alternate location to participate in the virtual exercise from 1400 to 1900.”
This year’s Gema Bhakti was definitely different, just like everything else in 2020. However, the partnership between the U.S Military and the TNI is stronger because the exercise still happened. Training got done. Lessons were learned. The relationships established in all the past years of Gema Bhakti and the all of the subject matter expert exchanges paved the road for this iteration’s virtual battlefield.
“We did lose some of the interaction because of the situation,” stated Lt . Col. Torres. “In-person discussions and interactions would be preferred, but we did our best under the circumstances and still reaped the benefits of conducting the exercise.”
| Date Taken: | 08.26.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 09.23.2020 19:25 |
| Story ID: | 378519 |
| Location: | HONOLULU, HI, US |
| Web Views: | 144 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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