PADANG, REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA, Friday 14 April 2016 – First Admiral Pg Dato Seri Pahlawan Norazmi bin Pg Haji Muhammad, the Commander of the Royal Brunei Navy (RBN) attended the 15th Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) in conjunction with the Indonesian Navy (IDN) International Fleet Review (IFR) and the 2nd Multilateral Naval Exercise KOMODO 2016 (MNEK) in Padang, Republic of Indonesia.
13 Chiefs of navies and 22 Heads of Delegations from 35 countries of the Western Pacific Region attended the events with the participation of 20 warships.
President of the Republic of Indonesia, His Excellency Joko Widodo, in his remarks at the launch emphasised the importance of military operations other than war in particular humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities. He further stressed that the activities of MNEK promotes defence diplomacy and at the same time strengthens navies’ multilateral capacities.
RBN’s KDB DARUTTAQWA participated with warships from other countries in the MNEK, held from the 12 to 16 April 2016. The exercise comprised of a Table Top Exercise (TTX), Command Post Exercise (CPX), and Field Training Exercise (FTX). The CPX focused on Maritime Peace Keeping and Human Assistance and Disaster Relief operations.
The highlight of the event was the 15th WPNS attended by Chiefs of Navies and Heads of Delegations from the Western Pacific region. This year’s theme is “Maritime Partnership for Stability in Western Pacific Region”. The symposium commenced with a keynote address by Admiral Ade Supandi, Chief of Staff Indonesian Navy. In his speech he stressed the importance of confidence building and capacity development among member navies in the advent of the current maritime security environment. These would include promoting education and training through exchanges of officers and visits.
On the sidelines of those events, the Commander of RBN took the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings with several of his counterparts. The 15th symposium ended on a high note with the agreement to hold the subsequent WPNS workshop in April 2017 in Chile and the Symposium in 2018 in the Republic of Korea.
