Australia, Indonesia conduct HADREX 2013 exercise

Australian and Indonesian Defence Forces have completed humanitarian assistance and disaster relief tabletop exercise HADREX 2013 at Robertson Barracks in Darwin, Australia, Defence minister Stephen Smith and Defence Science and Personnel minister Warren Snowdon said.

During the drill, Indonesian and Australian militaries have discussed on how to jointly respond to natural disasters in region and also consider the practical realities and challenges of working together in a difficult disaster scenario.

The exercise also involved military representatives from the seven East Asia Summit member countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, US and Vietnam.

HADREX13 has been designed to boost practical defence-to-defence and military-to-military cooperation for the participating nations.

Additionally, the drill aimed at building mutual respect, trust and cooperation between militaries and nations while reducing miscalculation.

Meanwhile, Indonesia is seeking four C-130H aircraft from Australia, as part of bilateral Defence cooperation, to improve its humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capability.

Currently, Australia and Indonesia officials are in the process of negotiating the sale of additional five C-130H aircraft, a simulator and spares inventory to Indonesia, to further boost its disaster response capability.

Through a range of regional and multilateral fora, the two nations cooperate closely on defence-to-defence and military-to-military matters.