Australian- Indonesia coordinated patrol

A clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny was held today at Lar­rakeyah Bar­racks to mark the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the inau­gur­al Coor­di­nat­ed Mar­itime Secu­ri­ty Patrol by the ADF and Indone­sian Armed Forces in the waters between Aus­tralia and Indone­sia dur­ing the peri­od 16–27 April 2010.

The com­bined oper­a­tion was con­duct­ed to improve coor­di­nat­ed mar­itime secu­ri­ty between the ADF and Indone­sian Armed Forces along the Aus­tralian and Indone­sian shared mar­itime bound­aries to the south of West Timor. 

“Over the past eleven days, Aus­tralia and Indone­sia have been oper­at­ing at sea, on land and in the air togeth­er, for the first time, to address shared mar­itime secu­ri­ty threats along our exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zone bound­aries,” said Com­modore David Gwyther, the Com­man­der North­ern Com­mand and Offi­cer in charge of the ADF Task Group. “It sends a mes­sage to those who may con­tem­plate con­duct­ing ille­gal activ­i­ties in our mar­itime zones, that the Indone­sian Armed Forces and the ADF are work­ing togeth­er — so beware” he said. 

Each Defence Force con­tributed mar­itime patrol air­craft, naval ves­sels and head­quar­ters staffs to two coor­di­nat­ed and syn­chro­nised task groups. These assets includ­ed HMA Ships Mary­bor­ough and Albany and an AP-3C Ori­on from the ADF, and corvettes KRI Wirat­no and Hasan Bas­ri and an NC-212 air­craft from the Indone­sian Armed Forces. 

As well as coor­di­nat­ed enforce­ment oper­a­tions, the patrol includ­ed infor­ma­tion shar­ing, inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and search and res­cue exer­cis­es designed to build con­fi­dence and improve com­bined oper­a­tional per­for­mance on the water and in the air. 

“Our Defence Forces made great progress in improv­ing our com­mu­ni­ca­tions, infor­ma­tion shar­ing tech­niques and mar­itime secu­ri­ty inter­op­er­abil­i­ty. It has been a very suc­cess­ful activ­i­ty and a great step for­ward in the mil­i­tary to mil­i­tary rela­tion­ship between our nations,” said Com­modore Wido­do, the Indone­sian East­ern Fleet Sea Com­bat Commander. 

Indone­sia and Aus­tralia con­tin­ue to work close­ly togeth­er to address shared mar­itime secu­ri­ty threats along our mar­itime bound­aries. Giv­en the suc­cess of this inau­gur­al patrol, the ADF and Indone­sian Armed Forces will be plan­ning future Coor­di­nat­ed Mar­itime Secu­ri­ty Patrols and fur­ther coop­er­a­tion on mar­itime secu­ri­ty issues. 

Source:
Aus­tralian Min­istry of Defence