Amphibious support vessel RFA Mounts Bay joined in with Exercise Tradewinds.

The exercise, say the Royal Navy, has been running since the 1980s and is aimed at getting all those nations with an interest in the security of the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico/North, Central and South America to work together.

“Exercise Tradewinds (TW19) is the annual Caribbean, multi-national, exercise which includes elements of ground security and interagency focused tasking, supporting the US SOUTHCOM Theatre campaign plan.

For her part in Tradewinds, Mounts Bay worked with nine nations from the Americas and Caribbean – Dominican Republic, Haiti, Canada, USA, Guyana, Jamaica, and Mexico, Bermuda, Barbados – for the annual test of international navies to deal with a myriad of potential problems in the Central America/Caribbean region, everything from disaster relief (highly likely) to countering drug runners and smugglers (a constant threat) and terrorist attacks (always possible).”

Edward Rogers, deputy head of training at US Southern Command, said many of the lessons learned during Tradewinds were valid far beyond the Caribbean:

“Whether this is your first Tradewinds or you’ve been in multiple ones, it’s an important exercise. It is really an enduring promise between the Caribbean and the Americas, where we come together once a year to execute training that is very critical. It builds friendships, trust, and partnerships and solidarity with all the participants.

By us coming together it allows us to be ready and to rapidly respond to whatever we face, whether they’re man-made or natural security threats.”

Avatar photo
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

7 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Peter Crisp
Peter Crisp
4 years ago

I’ve always thought that it must feel pretty great to go in and help people in need and make a difference and be thanked for that help.
The military often do wonderful work helping to repair destroyed infrastructure or keep people fed and with water and the pure sense of achievement must make it the hard work all worthwhile.

It often goes woefully unreported as well which is a huge shame.

Nigel Collins
Nigel Collins
4 years ago
Reply to  Peter Crisp

Agreed Peter Crisp, and if we greatly reduced our current foreign aid budget, we could do more to help the people that need it most.

Bill
Bill
4 years ago
Reply to  Nigel Collins

Too true. I recently lived in Key West and the number of ships calling there to meet JIAFTS was impressive. Top of the List was RFA Mounts Bay. The crew and the compliment of RE Commandos had a long deployment. They do a HEROS job while rarely offered even a thank you!

dan
dan
4 years ago
Reply to  Nigel Collins

It’s funny alot of the people we give the foreign aid to never lift a finger to help us, burn our flag, ect but if we were to stop that aid you would see them all crying like 2 year olds.

Cam
Cam
4 years ago
Reply to  Peter Crisp

Yeah our news programs pump out depressing bad news constantly! We should have more good news, more news that makes us british proud and our millitary does do many many great things and we should hear about it on mainstream media more often and not just millitary deaths!, gladly I haven’t seen any deaths reported in a while.

dan
dan
4 years ago
Reply to  Cam

I stopped watching TV/cable news a few years ago. Best decision I’ve ever made.

Jack
Jack
4 years ago
Reply to  Peter Crisp

I totally agree Peter. We have a media in the UK, led by the BBC, who are keen to hype up anything negative about our armed forces while ignoring all the good things the British armed forces do.