South African Army soldiers will be joined by colleagues from the Air Force, Military Health Service and Navy who, in turn, will link up with elements of the United States (US) Armed Forces in July for a joint, multi-national peace support operation and humanitarian relief exercise.
Exercise Shared Accord is a regular on the US Army Africa calendar and this year’s exercise, to be held in Richards Bay on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, will be the fourth to be held in South Africa. Malawi and Rwanda previously hosted US forces for Shared Accord.
Ahead of July’s exercise the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) held the main planning conference (MPC) for Shared Accord 2022. Apart from the month, no other details of force and equipment participation were released.
Previous Shared Accords in South Africa were staged in Eastern Cape with humanitarian operations, including provision of optical and veterinary care to locals, on the to-do list.
In 2017 the exercise was at the SA Army’s premier training area in Lohathla in the Northern Cape, where a table top command post exercise moved seamlessly into on-the-ground training. This saw, among others, American soldiers exchange weapons with their South African counterparts as they worked surveillance and intelligence gathering as well as area dominance patrols, convoy escort duties, casualty evacuation, dealing with child soldiers and negotiating with rebel representatives. The exercise was described as “more robust” than other Shared Accords.
