HMA Ships Arunta, Stuart and Sirius have been busy in North and South East Asian waters having recently conducted a port visit and naval exercise with the People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N) as well as training exercises with the French FNS Vendemiaire off Vietnam. This has occurred as the Minister for Defence Senator Marise Payne heads to Malaysia to attend the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus).
The port visit by HMA Ships Stuart and Arunta to Zhanjiang included a combined planning session for the exercise, official functions with local dignitaries, sporting activities, discussions on the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, and other mariner skills training. The visit concluded on Monday with a combined exercise involving joint search and rescue training, tactical evolutions, communications drills, and a live fire activity.
The following assembly of the French and RAN warships off Vietnam on Wednesday presented another valuable opportunity for the navies of Australia and France to exercise together, further enhancing our level of interoperability and maritime awareness in our region.
The four ships conducted a series of routine tactical maritime training activities, including ship manoeuvering, flying operations with Arunta’s embarked Seahawk helicopter, a refuelling at sea activity with Sirius and a live firing using close range weapons against a static target.
“The conduct of regional naval engagement is an important component of relationship building," Chief of Joint Operations Vice Admiral David Johnston said.
"This Navy to Navy training is part of the RAN's routine regional engagement activities in both North and South East Asia."
Minister Payne is in Malaysia from until 5 November attending the ASEAN ADMM-Plus and said the ADMM-Plus was Australia’s top priority for our defence engagement with regional security architecture.
The ADMM-Plus has a focus on practical military cooperation, including sharing expertise, standardising procedures and conducting field exercises. It will be the third meeting of ministers since the ADMM-Plus was established in 2010 and will discuss progress in cooperation within the ADMM-Plus framework and regional security developments.
“Australia welcomes the success of the ADMM-Plus in fostering practical military cooperation,” Minister Payne said.
“As the current co-chair with Singapore of the ADMM-Plus Counter Terrorism Experts’ Working Group, we have helped build the region’s collective capacity to combat terrorism.”
“This work will culminate with a major regional maritime security and counter-terrorism exercise in Singapore and Brunei in May 2016.”
The meeting will be attended by defence ministers from the 18 member countries. The ADMM-Plus includes the 10 ASEAN members and eight ‘Plus’ countries: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia and the US.