Eighteen Grenadians officers attached to the Special Service Unit and Coast Guard are among military personnel attending the annual Tradewinds exercise training which started in St Kitts last Sunday.
Military and security forces from Caribbean nations joined the United States, Canada, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Mexico, and the United Kingdom for maritime security and disaster response training at Camp Springfield in St. Kitts as part of Exercise Tradewinds 2015.
A news release from the USA Embassy said that this year’s Exercise Tradewinds will be conducted in three phases. “Phase I will include maritime and land operations, and it will take place in St. Kitts and Nevis through June 9; Phase II will include maritime and land operations, including U.S. Marines in Belize 15 to 24 June; Phase III, a Key Leader Seminar, will be conducted 14 to 16 July in Miami for key stakeholders and decision makers from the region,” said the release.
Exercise Tradewinds supports the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI), a U.S. Department of State regional security partnership. Phase I and II are designed to conduct joint, interagency capacity building exercises for participating nations. Those exercises focus on increasing regional cooperation in complex, multinational security operations, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response operations.
“Tradewinds provides the opportunity to develop and strengthen our partnerships and allows all the participants to collaborate together to ensure regional security,” said General John F. Kelly, Commander of U.S. Southern Command, adding, “Like the other countries participating in Tradewinds, we value this collaboration as well as the awareness and teamwork it cultivates.”
The release said that Military and police personnel from 12 other Caricom member states (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago) will join military personnel from the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Dominican Republic for Phase I of Exercise Tradewinds 2015.
Participating regional organizations include the Regional Security System (RSS), Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Caribbean Disaster Response Unit (CRDU), Caricom (IMPACS), and the Regional Intelligence Fusion Center (RIFC).
