HONOLULU -- Representatives from Singapore’s senior military leadership participated in the Pacific Amphibious Leadership Symposium, or PALS, in Honolulu, Hawaii, May 21-24, 2018.
PALS is designed to gather members of 22 different militaries in the Indo-Pacific region with an interest in amphibious capabilities and operations so that they can exchange ideas and knowledge about multinational interoperability, logistics, and promoting peace and stability.
“The Pacific Amphibious Leadership Symposium is important because it’s relevant to the many challenges the territorial states in the Pacific region face today,” said Singapore Army Col. Shin Tai Leung, commander, Headquarters Combined Arms Division, Singapore Armed Forces. “PALS provides a platform for dialogue on key aspects of amphibious operations, crises responses, interoperability and capability development.”
PALS brings together senior military leaders from allied and partner militaries with amphibious interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Through this symposium, they aim to build on their already-existing relationships, as well as the security and stability of the region.
Additionally, they discussed information and strategies involving their amphibious capabilities.
“These conferences, the annual PALS, allow us to exchange ideas with other [militaries], figure out what they are trying that’s working that we might not have thought of yet and vice versa,” said U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. David H. Berger, commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific. “It improves our warfighting capability, it improves our ability to react to a crisis because we are sharing ideas, and the U.S. certainly doesn’t have the corner on the market on all good ideas.”
Leung also stated that PALS provides a good means of exchanging ideas while additionally helping to increase allied and partner militaries’ ability to work together.
“I think better interoperability, maritime information sharing, troop platforms such as the Singapore Armed Forces Changi Regional HADR Coordination Centre, will result in better outcomes and better coordinated responses to regional crisis,” Leung said.