Chinese troops have an offline group discussion during the exercise.(Photo by Zhang Xiaowei)
By Chen Dianhong and Li Qi
KUNMING, August 3 -- The humanitarian assistance and disaster relief field training exercise (HADR FTX) as part of Cobra Gold 2021 multi-national exercise concluded in Kunming City of China on the morning of August 2.
Since the morning of July 30, over 40 participating troops from 9 countries, including China, the US, Thailand, Japan, ROK, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and India, have attended the desktop dry run and forum of the HADR FTX via video links in accordance with the plan.
During the video forum, 13 experts from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre), and other professional institutions, conducted in-depth exchanges on "civil-military coordination in humanitarian relief operations" and "establishment of multinational coordination centers”, etc. in the context of coping with flood and earthquake relief.
During the desktop dry run on August 1, participants from various countries discussed issues including the rational allocation of rescue forces and the organization of joint search and rescue coordination agencies according to the "disaster" and "the realities of the affected country". To tackle typical obstacles such as the shortage of medical resources and the disruptions of transportation and communications, the participants thrashed out highly efficient, comprehensive, and professional rescue plans.
All participating parties generally gave positive comments to the speech and performance of the Chinese participating squad. They praised that China had rich hands-on experience in disaster relief, and the Chinese squad shared the "Chinese solution" to the exploration of the best ways to implement joint rescue and relief operations.
As an influential joint military exercise in Southeast Asia, “Cobra Gold” is held in Thailand on an annual basis. China started to join the “Cobra Gold” exercise as an observer in 2002 and assigned an actual military squad to participate in for the first time in 2014