Tradewinds Continues With Vessel-Boarding Exercise
(ZIZ News) — Training in the Maritime Phase of Exercise Tradewinds 2015 continued on Friday at Porte Zante.
ZIZ News was on board a Coast Guard vessel to witness a mock search that formed part of the training.
We caught up with Petty Officer Damian Leonard who shared what is to be expected during the next few days of training.
“Today specifically, we are giving everybody that’s participating a chance to practice what we’ve all been sharing, information back and forth in leading up to our exercises. Tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, we are going to be doing some exercises where we give everybody that’s in conglomerate here a chance to practice everything and apply it in the field and it kind of reinforces everything we talked about this week,” he explained.
Petty Officer Leonard said that although there are approximately 15 nations participating in Tradewinds, they do mostly the same work and are able to share information with each other.
Public Affairs Officer with the United States Southern Command, Lieutenant Colonel Christian Patterson, said the ongoing training has been impressive.
“My impression of Tradewinds is that it is an outstanding training opportunity. The partner nations are doing an outstanding job. We’re all sharing our expertise and tactics and procedures on how to do things from maritime operations to land operations so I’m thoroughly impressed with everyone involved and blessed to be a part of it,” he said.
The Maritime Phase of Exercise Tradewinds 2015 will run until June 9th.