More than 460 Royal Australian Air Force personnel have returned to Australia after participating in the ninth iteration of Exercise Cope North at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
The Exercise was held from 18 February to 8 March 2019 and included participants from Australia, Japan and the United States.
The Royal Australian Air Force deployed 14 aircraft to focus on interoperability with United States and Japanese counterparts.
Eleven F/A-18A/B Classic Hornets, an E-7A Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft, a C-27J Spartan, a KC-30A Multi-Role Tanker Transport, a Combat Support Element and an Aeromedical Evacuation team were deployed and integrated with Japanese and United States counterparts.
Group Captain (GPCAPT) Nicholas Hogan, the Australian Commander for Exercise Cope North, said it had been a successful exercise and one that offered unique opportunities to rehearse real world scenarios in a controlled exercise environment.
“More than 2,900 military personnel and approximately 100 aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), United States Military and Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) participated in the exercise,” GPCAPT Hogan said.
Cope North 2019 was further challenged by Typhoon Wutip that paused the Exercise.
“The agility of RAAF, JASDF and the United States Military personnel was shown when they worked quickly together and enact weather contingencies.
“Overall, the RAAF successfully demonstrated our multilateral interoperability and coalition procedures through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training and large force employment missions with our aircraft completing 207 sorties.”
Training programs on Exercise Cope North provided our personnel with invaluable opportunities to integrate with regional partners and maintains the relationship between Australia, Japan and the United States for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.
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