ZAMBOANGA CITY—Naval Forces Western Mindanao (NFWM) is participating in the 10-day annual Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (Seacat) that kicked off on Tuesday.

A Navy official said the NFWM forms part of the Philippine contingent that joined the navy forces from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States in the combined exercise aimed to enhance interoperability and share best practices.

Codenamed Seacat 2011, it is being held on Malacca Strait, Sulu Sea, and Celebes Sea and is set to end on Friday. 

The Seacat 2011 exercise director, Navy Capt. Sebastian Pan, said the other Navy contingents are from the Naval Forces West (NFW) and Naval Forces Eastern Mindanao (NFEM), aside from the NFWM.

Pan said they will participate together with the US Navy in a scenario-driven fleet-training exercise against terrorism, transnational crimes and other maritime threats, which focus on real-time information exchange, coordinated surveillance operations, tracking and eventual conduct of Visit Board Search and Seizure to the maritime Contact of Interest (COI).

“This activity will involve surface, air and special operations units in the conduct of surveillance, tracking and boarding of the COI from the different participating navies within their respective maritime territories,” Pan said in a statement.

He said three ships from the NFWM, NFEM and NFW commands are participating in this year’s Seacat 2011 exercise.

As practiced in the yearly Seacat, Pan said several ships from each participating Southeast Asian navy will join the training with the one US Navy ship, USS Safeguard, designated as the COI for the participating Southeast Asian navies. 

He said one Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO) scenario with boarding opportunity will be conducted at the Sulu and Mindanao seas.

At the same time, he said the Coast Watch Stations of the three Philippine Navy commands were alerted to exercise their capabilities in surveillance, tracking, communications and operations.

He said the SEACAT exercise is a yearly combined exercise conducted at vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia to ensure control of vital sea lanes from terrorists, poachers, and transnational lawless elements.

“This exercise aims to promote regional coordination, information sharing and interoperability in a multilateral environment,” Pan said.

With this exercise, Pan said the Navy will be able to enhance regional coordination, information sharing, and combined inter-operability capability with participating  navies in the region, tests its personnel and naval assets operational readiness and ultimately, improve the defense capability of the Armed Forces.