Cobra Gold
Cobra Gold 05
More than 500 military and civilian personnel from the United States, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and several other countries attended the opening ceremony for exercise Cobra Gold 2005 at the Lotus Pang Suan Kaew Hotel on 2 May 2005, marking the official start of the 25th annual exercise. More than 250 Marines and sailors with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, based at Marine Corps Air Sation Iwakuni, Japan arrived in Thailand on 20 April. The service members were with Marine Aircraft Group 12, Marine Wing Support Squadron 171, Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 121 and Marine Air Control Squadron 4's Detachment B. The exercise was held in various locations throughout Thailand May 2-13 and had more than 6,400 military servicemembers from more than 13 countries around the world participating.
During exercies for Cobra Gold 05, participating forces completed six humanitarian engineering construction projects where service members rebuilt structures, such as school and bridges. They also completed 11 medical civil action projects, providing basic medical and dental care to rural Thai villages. Other events during Cobra Gold '05 included mass causality drills, noncombatant evacuation training, and various other combined military training and live-fire exercises and humanitarian assistance projects.
The focus of the Cobra Gold 05 exercise was to capture lessons learned from the humanitarian assistance/disaster relief response to the 26 December 2004 earthquake and resulting tsunami that devastated nations surrounding the Indian Ocean. A daily, executive level, disaster relief workshop began May 2, allowing leaders to discuss ways to improve response time to natural disasters and ways of detecting tsunamis and earthquakes.
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