4k US navy personnel join ‘Cobra Gold’

The USS Somerset and USS Miguel Keith with more than 4,000 personnel will be deployed during Cobra Gold 2024, a joint military exercise to be held in Thailand from Feb 26 to March 8.

The United States troops will be among 9,590 soldiers from 30 countries taking part in the annual drills, said Gen Thitichai Tiantong, Chief of Joint Staff of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, during a briefing for the event.

The USS Somerset is a San Antonio-class transport dock of the US Navy, while the USS Miguel Keith is a Lewis B Puller-class mobile base.

The US will focus more on amphibious drills this year, said Col Kurtis A Leffler, chief of the Joint US Military Advisory Group Thailand.

The Thai and US navies will also work during Cobra Gold to salvage the wreckage of HTMS Sukhothai, according to the US embassy. HTMS Sukhothai sank about 35km off the coast of Prachuap Khiri Khan on Dec 18, 2022, after being caught in a storm.

This year’s exercise will see seven nations participate in all core parts of it throughout the period. They are Thailand, the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

China and India will take part only in the humanitarian civic assistance training, while Australia will participate only in the command-post exercise.

Another 10 countries will take turns attending the exercise in a group called the multinational planning augmentation team. The team consists of Bangladesh, Canada, France, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, the Philippines, Fiji, Britain and Brunei.

The other 10 will participate in the exercise in the other group called the combined observer liaison team. They are Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, Pakistan, Vietnam, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Kuwait and Sri Lanka.