Instead of F/A-18C Hornets sweeping through the sky while MV-22 Ospreys hovered over soldiers conducting live fire exercises, Cobra Gold 2015 was, by all accounts, a much duller affair this year.
The largest annual Asia-Pacific military exercise ended Friday with little of the fanfare that’s come to signify the 33-year-old event which serves as a massive military bro-fest between the Thai and U.S. military, along with other participating forces from the region.
If the stream of press materials coming from the U.S. Army’s media outfit was any indication, Cobra Gold 2015 was indeed drastically “scaled down” as promised by the U.S. military following last year’s coup.
There were fewer breathless reports such as “Thai, U.S. Marines Advance Across the Battlefield Together” and “U.S. Marines Secure Friendships by Securing Rooms with Thai Marines.” Indeed the scaled-down coverage suggested the event was mostly school-building and one account of “Soldier Plays Soccer to Help Build Relationships with His Thai Counterparts During Exercise Cobra Gold.”
Although the diminished scale of the annual joint exercise, which puts the Thai military side-by-side with one of the best trained and equipped in the world, had to bruise some egos, officials remained upbeat.
Defense Forces Chief Gen. Worapong Sanganetra said he was satisfied with the joint military exercise and that everyone else was satisfied too.
He said that everyone agreed next year should be a “‘heavy year’ exercise type,” according to MCOT News, which would mean the United States would bring its full box of toys.
Nearly 11,000 soldiers participated this year from the United States, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, with personnel from India and China returning again to participate in humanitarian exercises.
Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei and Pakistan sent observers.
Worapong classified U.S.-Thai military relations as “warm.”
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Soldiers drill, drink snake blood in multinational ‘Cobra Gold’ drill (PHOTOS)
