SINGAPORE –
The 23rd annual Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT) exercise concluded Aug. 23, 2024 following 14 days of in-person and at-sea engagements structured to enhance collaboration among 21 Indo-Pacific Allies and focused on the shared maritime security challenges of the region.
SEACAT is a multilateral exercise designed to strengthen cooperation among Southeast Asian countries and provide mutual support toward a common goal of addressing crises, contingencies, and illegal activities in the maritime domain with standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures.
“SEACAT is a great opportunity for the United States and Southeast Asian partner nations to come together for a common goal. It provides the forum for us to learn and train with each other for the advancement of our collective Maritime Security, not only during the exercise itself, but during the planning process,” said Lt. Cmdr. Geoffrey Rienstra, Logistics and Planning officer assigned to Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific/CTF 73 (COMLOG WESTPAC). “The CTF-73 planning team has enjoyed every second of planning for this exercise because we see the returns of working with our partner-nations.”
More than twenty Allied and partner maritime forces participated in the exercise, including Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, New Zealand, Palau, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.
Ashore, SEACAT included a Maritime Security (MARSEC) seminar that featured presentations, live question and answer sessions, and panel discussions with representatives from all participating nations as well as international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academia.
Non-military participants included members of EU Critical Maritime Route Wider Indian Ocean (CRIMARIO), Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), Maxar Technologies, SkyLight, Unseenlabs, Hawkeye 360, SeaVision and Volpe National Transportation Systems Center.
The shore phase also involved a Sensing workshop that brought together maritime security agencies and navies from across the region to share best practices in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) employment, planning and operations, and to develop and improve collaborative ISR.
“The opportunity to exercise better maritime domain awareness practices with our Allies and partners was exciting,” said Lt. Alex Falten, an officer assigned to COMLOG WESTPAC. “I look forward to seeing how future iterations of SEACAT evolve.”
The sea phase included Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) exercises performed by multiple nations aboard a contracted vessel used as a live training venue in a real-world at-sea environment. U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team (USCG MSRT) members embarked the vessel and facilitated participants’ interdictions and boardings, building on skills practiced in an Enforcement workshop during the shore phase.
Additionally, a second U.S. government-owned vessel was employed to simulate a so-called “dark” vessel transiting through Southeast Asia that participating agencies and navies were challenged to locate, track and report.
Running concurrently with the sea phase, an information sharing exercise was conducted at the Republic of Singapore Navy’s Information Fusion Center (IFC). The IFC served as a centralized hub for information sharing in the tracking of the two target vessels simulating suspicious vessels of interest.
“In SEACAT 2025, we will continue to examine the hot topics in maritime security in order to find collaborative solutions, we will foster dialogue between senior maritime security leaders, and we will challenge ourselves to improve our ability to sense in the maritime,” said Capt. Axel Steiner, Chief of Staff assigned to COMLOG WESTPAC, in looking ahead to the next SEACAT. “Security at sea is an opportunity to create prosperity, not prosperity for some at the expense of others, the goal is prosperity for all. And the first step to achieving security at sea is to know what is happening on, over, and under the sea. That is the driving force behind SEACAT.”
U.S. Navy participants included staff from COMLOG WESTPAC and personnel from the U.S. 7th Fleet and U.S. Pacific Fleet staffs.
COMLOG WESTPAC supports deployed surface units and aircraft carriers, along with regional Allies and partners, to facilitate patrols in the South China Sea, participation in naval exercises and responses to natural disasters.