BEIJING, Feb. 25 -- The Cobra Gold 2022 humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) exercise was held in Thailand from February 18 to 20. The Chinese military sent a 10-member team to attend via video link the HADR table top exercise (HADR-TTX) under the theme of international disaster response and civil-military coordination in the context of epidemic situation. The participants from different countries also exchanged views on the early warning mechanism for disaster relief.

This year, the Cobra Gold 2022HADR-TTX has not only involved the lectures on the routine topics including the disaster response operation mechanism and international and regional humanitarian agencies, but also specially added lectures and seminars on the HADR mechanism establishment and operation under the pandemic situation. Five Chinese participants made presentations on behalf of their own groups.

Teams from all the participating countries took turns to make presentations on the theme of the operational mechanism of disaster relief early warning system on the afternoon of February 19.

It is learnt that the Cobra Gold humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) exercise, annually held since 1982, has become the largest multinational military exercise in the Southeast Asia. China started to participate as the observer in 2002 and then dispatched troops for this exercise from 2014.

Due to the impact of global pandemic, the Chinese military has participated in the exercise via video conference for consecutive two years since 2021. In the three-day exercise this year, the Chinese side actively provided China’s experience and programs for improving the multinational joint disaster relief capability.