U.S. Southern Command kicked off the longest-standing naval exercise in the world this week off the coast of Ecuador, until recently a far-left government that banished American forces from a naval base paid for with American tax dollars.
“We embrace this opportunity to come together, united as one fighting force,” Rear Adm. Donald Gabrielson, commander of the U.S. 4th Fleet, said in virtual opening remarks for the 61st annual UNITAS exercise.
Several thousand sailors, marines, soldiers, airmen, and Coast Guard cutterman from 11 Latin American nations will practice inter-operability over the course of the eight-day exercise.
Ironically, Tuesday’s opening ceremony was held at Ecuador’s Manta Naval Base, a station with reinforced air landing strips paid for by the United States, and that was, until 2009, home to 300 U.S. troops.
The U.S. Air Force ran 100 monthly E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control systems, or AWACS, and Navy P-3 Orion counter-narcotics flights over a region of heavy coca production.
A decade ago, leftist firebrand Rafael Correa ended a basing agreement, and U.S. troops departed. But cooperation with Correa’s former vice president, Lenin Moreno, has increased, as evidenced by Ecuador’s hosting of UNITAS this year.
Thirteen warships from the U.S., Ecuador, and a number of Caribbean and formerly hostile South American nations will partake in the Pacific Ocean exercises through Nov. 11.
Those countries include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Uruguay.
First executed in 1960, UNITAS will practice joint naval operations including, littoral warfare, maritime interdiction operations, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare, and counter-organized crime operations.
