BANDUNG, Indonesia, Aug 31 (Reuters) – The United States and Indonesia launched their annual joint military exercises on Monday, the first since announcing a new defence partnership this year, with drills from tactical airborne jumps and missile firing to jungle training and cyber defence.
“Super Garuda Shield”, held annually since 2006, will run until September 11 and include more than 4,700 personnel, with 13 other countries taking part including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada.
The exercises will take place in several regions of Indonesia and will include infiltration drills, firing of stinger missiles, jungle training and naval manoeuvres.
This edition comes after the two countries’ defence ministers signed a major defence cooperation partnership in April, which Jakarta has said will include U.S. support in its military modernisation initiatives and training of its troops.
“We are not just meeting for another annual training cycle. We are writing a historic new chapter in our bilateral relationship,” Major General Patrick Ellis, U.S. Army Commanding General of the 4th Infantry Division, said in a speech opening the exercises in Bandung.
Indonesia has long maintained a foreign policy of non-alignment, with President Prabowo Subianto vowing to befriend all nations and maintain good ties with both the United States and China.
Indonesia earlier this month agreed to boost its military ties with Beijing during a visit by China’s foreign and defence ministers.
Super Garuda Shield will also include humanitarian disaster relief efforts.
Natural disasters like earthquakes and landslides are common in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands and more than 100 active volcanoes that sits on the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire”. A 7.7-magnitude quake earlier this month in East Nusa Tenggara killed more than 100 people.
An ongoing battle for Indonesia has also been wildfires that burned nearly 95,000 hectares (234,750 acres) of land in July, almost doubling the damage done in the previous six months, with haze blanketing the region and causing respiratory problems and school closures.
(Reporting by Dicky Nawazaki in Bandung and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Editing by Martin Petty)
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