US Marines on exercise in Grahamstown

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More than 400 US Marines of the 4th Light Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion have arrived in Grahamstown to train with South African soldiers and take part in a joint peace-support and humanitarian relief exercise.

Until August 12, members of the South African National Defence Force and the US Armed Forces are participating in Exercise Shared Accord 2011 at the Grahamstown 6 South African Infantry Battalion base.

The American soldiers drove from Port Elizabeth to the Grahamstown army base in trucks on Monday, together with an assortment of weaponry, to meet their South African counterparts.

The troops had flown into the country, while their armoury and tanks had to get here by sea. They are docked at Coega harbour, in Port Elizabeth.

Augmented by troops from as far as Pretoria, most of the SANDF contingent are locally based members of 6 SAI.

The military said in a statement that the aim of the exercise was to provide collective training for the SANDF and US armed forces, “building interoperability and mutual understanding between the two forces”.

All services of the SANDF (SA Army, SA Air Force, SA Navy and SA Military Health Service) will be involved.

Included in the training will be live fire exercises, which will peak on Tuesday.

Port Elizabeth is also getting its share of the action, with Algoa Bay the site of “various SA Air Force and SA Navy components” involved in “exercises at sea”, said 6SAI Communication Officer Royden Vlotman.

In the humanitarian assistance component of the exercise, from last Friday until next Saturday the SA Military Health Service is combining with their medical counterparts from the US naval medical personnel in an outreach programme to the Kleinskool community, near Port Elizabeth, in conjunction with the provincial Department of Health.
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In conjunction with the provincial health department, they will “perform basic dental care, hygiene and tooth extractions, provide basic primary health care to adults and children and also provide basic refractory evaluations and dispense eyeglasses (spectacles)” the statement says.

Veterinarian personnel from both armies will also run a community outreach programme with the SPCA in KwaNobuhle and Allenridge, near Uitenhage, for domestic pets and livestock.

The SA Engineer Corps and US Marine Corps combat engineers will also erect “a structure at the SPCA in Uitenhage” and ensure drainage around the local community pound.

Exercise Shared Accord is an annually scheduled US-partner nation event and has taken place in Benin, Ghana and Senegal. Last year it was held in Mozambique, where some 1000 US service personnel and Mozambican soldiers participated.

Shared Accord is one of 14 annual multinational exercises the US conducts on the continent to train US and African forces to conduct peacekeeping operations in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of two involving South Africa.

The other exercise is Southern Warrior, a “small unit regional training exercise tailored to specific unit and country needs to build regional cooperation. Slated for the South African winter and spring, US Africom [Africa Command] supports the deployment phase of the exercise”. Shared Accord, meanwhile, “trains US and African forces to conduct peacekeeping operations in sub-Saharan Africa,” according to an Africa Command fact sheet.

Joint exercises between South African and US armed forces are somewhat uncommon because of political attitudes in the former, but are not as rare as may be thought.

In July 2003 a battalion of US Rangers was deployed to De Brug, Bloemfontein, for Flintlock 2003 with the SA Army’s 44 Parachute Regiment. Medflag 2004 at the Hoedspruit, Mpumalanga, Air Force Base featured 250 US Air Force personnel. One of the operations carried out there was a mass-casualty exercise with the SA Military Health Service and SA Air Force.
altPassage exercises” with passing and visiting US warships are more common and SA has reportedly also joined the African Partnership Station (APS), a US-led effort to improve maritime security along the African east and west coasts. APS training focuses on a broad range of areas, including maritime law enforcement, search and rescue capabilities, civil engineering and logistics, and navigation.

Shared Acccord will likely be the largest SA-USMC collaboration since Exercises Amity I and II in the early 1960s, involving a beach assault at Bloubergstrand and parachute drops in the Milnerton area of Cape Town.

Minister of Defence Lindiwe Sisulu will be the guest of honour this Friday at the Grahamstown army base, where the marines are based, for a tactical weapons display. They will be demonstrating the centrepiece of the exercise, the LAV/25 – an eight-wheeled amphibious reconnaissance vehicle used by the United States Marine Corps, but made in Canada.
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