Cope North humanitarian assistance, disaster relief training improves cohesion in Asia-Pacific Region

by Airman 1st Class Emily A. Bradley
36th Wing Public Affairs

3/9/2014 - ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam  -- Airmen representing the United States, Japan, and Australia exercised their abilities to respond to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in support of exercise Cope North Feb. 16 through 28 on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.

"Cope North training is very different because it provides an opportunity to work side-by-side with multi-national teams on practical disaster scenarios," said U.S. Air Force Col. Thomas "Doc" Livingston, commander of the 36th Contingency Response Group at Andersen. "Getting the planes and participants to Andersen provides a cross-cultural level of realism we cannot achieve during local training on our own."


The first several days of Cope North focused primarily on the HA/DR training and featured several air transport missions to the neighboring islands of Tinian and Saipan to exercise operating a "hub and spoke" system for providing relief supplies and aid, planners said.

During the simulated scenarios, the Airmen practiced air drops on the north side of Tinian and at Point Udall, or Orote Point, on Naval Base Guam. The 36th Airlift Squadron from Yokota Air Base, Japan also received the opportunity to test an improved airdrop bundle.

"These new bundles can float in the ocean for hours, remaining completely dry and ultimately making the food, water and supplies more survivable," said Capt. Ian Haig, 36th AS Cope North deputy mission commander. "This also helps our Airmen improve overall response time. We can deliver the bundles more quickly and accurately while also ensuring that the contents will not be ruined."

The HA/DR emphasis is a result of multilateral partners within the Asia-Pacific region sharing a common concern to improve their nations response to emergency situations. This determination is based on lessons learned from recent Pacific disasters such as Super Typhoon Haiyan which devastated the Philippines in November 2013 and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011. All of these events proved that nations in the Pacific need to increase cooperation and improve capabilities with their regional partners.

"We get to develop synergies that only a coalition can provide and we work through the differences in tactics, techniques, and procedures that otherwise go unrealized," Livingston said.

The multilateral basis for the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief portions of Cope North enhance regional capabilities to respond to crises and lays the foundation for the expansion of regional cooperation in the face of real world contingencies. As Cope North continues in to its second week of operations, the U.S., along with its regional partners, focus on the strategic and tactical portions of the exercise in order to prepare for future combined operations.