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Indonesia, US eye more integrated military exercises
With aligned interests, the armed forces of Indonesia and the United States are seeking new ways to cooperate even closer, at a time when the superpower rivalry between the US and China heats up.
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United States Army soldiers attend a ceremony marking the start of the 15th Garuda Shield joint exercise with the Indonesian Army at the Baturaja military training ground in South Sumatra on Aug. 4, 2021. (Antara/Nova Wahyudi)
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ndonesia and the United States are exploring the possibility of integrating their joint military exercises across all branches amid simmering tensions in the South China Sea, further bringing the two sides closer together amid a tense superpower rivalry.
Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Andika Perkasa met with Admiral John C. Aquilino, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, in Jakarta on Monday to discuss how both their nations’ armed forces could better link up.
Building on last year’s successful Garuda Shield exercise, which he oversaw as then-army chief of staff, Andika said the TNI and the Indo-Pacific Command were now working on more integrated exercises involving all its forces.
Garuda Shield is considered the largest joint drills the two sides have bilaterally staged thus far, with more than 3,000 army personnel deployed concurrently on the islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi over a span of two weeks in August.
It is hardly the only joint exercises the two sides regularly stage, as other TNI branches have their own joint drills with American counterparts. However, Andika specifically insists on improving interoperability with the US as Indonesia works to improve its military capabilities to better maintain territorial integrity.
The military commander said the TNI would take all the help it could get from friendly countries like the US, given its own limited capacity to oversee the archipelago’s vast territorial waters, which is nearly five times as large as its land mass.
“We are planning for an exercise that does not eliminate any [existing] training. We want better forms of training among our forces across all branches – from planning to staging – so we all get a sense of integration,” he told reporters on Monday.
