Ina rare joint military exercise the US and Chinese navies have carried outdrills to combat pirates off the Horn of Africa.
Theexercise, the first bilateral counter-piracy drill ever conducted between the twonations, paired the US Navy cruiser Winston S Churchill with the Chinese frigateYi Yang to conduct a combined visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS)boarding.
The focus was on bilateral interoperability in detecting, boarding andsearching suspected vessels as well as the ability of both Chinese and Americannaval assets to respond to pirated vessels.
“Piracy is a threat to the freedom of the seas, economic security, and thesafety of mariners from all nations,” said Cmdr Chris Stone, Winston S.Churchill’s commanding officer.
“Bilateralexercises such as this demonstrate the cooperative will of the internationalcommunity and increases proficiency of multinational forces in confronting thethreat.”
“Wehave common regional and global security challenges, and we are able to jointlyaddress those by training together.”
VBSS teams from both ships performed the boarding on the Winston S Churchill,which was simulating a pirated vessel.
Executingthe boarding as a combined US-Chinese team, the team searched the vessel andprovided assistance to the role-playing mariners.
“It was exciting to interact with the Chinese Sailors and cooperate in acritical environment,” said Lt Edward Kellum, boarding officer for Winston Churchill’sVBSS team.
“Anytimewe work with a foreign military, it adds a different perspective to how weoperate. However, to collaborate with the Chinese in an anti-piracy frameworkis a rare opportunity and a real achievement for maritime security.”
China hasmaintained a counter-piracy presence in the Indian Ocean for four years.It sent its first convoy fleet to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters inDecember 2008.
