Australia — Successful mission for recon patrol in East Timor

The Inter­na­tion­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Force (ISF) has begun prepa­ra­tions for EXERCISE CROCODILE 2011 (also known as Marine Exer­cise or MAREX) by iden­ti­fy­ing pos­si­ble loca­tions to hold mil­i­tary train­ing.

Dur­ing August, mem­bers of ANZAC Company’s recon­nais­sance pla­toon are engag­ing mem­bers of com­mu­ni­ties to seek sup­port for future land use. 

Recon­nais­sance platoon’s Lance Cor­po­ral Chris Cooke, who is nor­mal­ly based at Brisbane’s Enoger­ra bar­racks, said the mis­sion was focused on the South Coast of East Timor. 

“We’ve spo­ken to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and their lead­ers, which are called Xefe de Sucos, to deter­mine their thoughts on us using their land next year. We have so far received only pos­i­tive feed­back,” he said. 

EXERCISE CROCODILE is a mul­ti nation­al, annu­al exer­cise host­ed by East Tim­or com­pris­ing the East Tim­o­rese Defence force (F‑FDTL), the US Marine Corps and the ISF per­son­nel to pro­mote cooperation. 

The sol­diers from recon­nais­sance pla­toon have already plot­ted poten­tial land loca­tions, and under­tak­en key lead­er­ship engage­ment tasks in var­i­ous dis­tricts to help lim­it any impact the train­ing may have on those liv­ing close by. 

Com­man­der of the ISF, Colonel Simon Stu­art, said it is impor­tant to con­tin­ue build­ing the rela­tion­ship with the F‑FDTL and the peo­ple they serve. 

“A key role of the ISF is work­ing in sup­port of the Defence Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gram (DCP) to pro­vide men­tor­ing and sup­port to the F‑FDTL in mil­i­tary skills, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, plan­ning, engi­neer­ing and construction.” 

“Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of this year’s CROCODILE EXERCISE in June, it is impor­tant the momen­tum gen­er­at­ed in train­ing and devel­op­ment is car­ried on into the future,” he said. 

CROCODILE 2011, which will span one week, is cur­rent­ly planned for Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber next year. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter