Marine Corps Participates in Southeast Asia's Largest 'Cobra Gold Joint Exercise'

Six Nations Including Korea, the US, and Thailand Participate
Marine Corps Loads KAAV on Singaporean Landing Ship for the First Time

The Marine Corps announced on the 4th that it has been participating in the 2025 Cobra Gold joint exercise from the 25th of last month until the 7th of this month in the Thailand area, along with six participating countries including the United States, to enhance multinational joint operation capabilities.

Cobra Gold is a humanitarian and peace-oriented joint exercise conducted since 1982, hosted by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Royal Thai Armed Forces Headquarters, and is considered the largest joint exercise in the Southeast Asia region. The participating countries in this joint exercise are six nations: Korea, the United States, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

This year marks the 16th time the Korean Marine Corps has participated in Cobra Gold, expanding its joint operational capabilities. To this end, the Marine Corps dispatched about 210 personnel centered on the 73rd Battalion of the 1st Division, along with 11 types of equipment including the Korean Amphibious Assault Vehicle (KAAV) and the K-55 self-propelled howitzer, embarked on the Navy’s Nojeokbong ship.

The exercise is broadly divided into field maneuver training, humanitarian civil activities, joint staff and cyber, and space training. Field maneuver training is conducted separately by branches and units such as artillery, infantry, reconnaissance, and engineering. From the 1st to the 3rd, a joint amphibious landing exercise was held at Hat Yao Beach with all units participating together to master multinational forced entry operation procedures.

On the day before the D-Day of the joint landing exercise, the training began with reconnaissance of the landing coast by a U.S. maritime patrol aircraft. Then, reconnaissance units of the Korean, U.S., and Thai Marine Corps deployed to the coast to conduct preparatory operations necessary for the landing. After confirming that the conditions required for the landing were met, about 600 Marines from Korea, the U.S., and Thailand swiftly landed on the designated coast by boarding amphibious assault vehicles and landing craft.

The Marine Corps conducted a training exercise for the first time to load KAAVs onto a Singaporean landing ship to verify joint operational capabilities with various countries, and operated combat armored bulldozers and Mikliks in a new environment to conduct realistic obstacle breaching.

Additionally, a separately formed joint staff group practiced planning and strategy formulation procedures for joint operations, and officially participated in space training, which had only been observed in 2024, to learn space operation planning and coordination procedures. Furthermore, some personnel performed defense missions against reconnaissance and attacks by opposing forces in a virtual cyber battlefield through cyber defense training.

Moreover, Navy and Marine Corps engineering units conducted recovery training for collapsed buildings and bridges caused by disasters such as earthquakes, fires, and floods together with foreign troops participating in the exercise, and carried out humanitarian civil activities by constructing school buildings in the Nikon Ratchasima area of Thailand and delivering relief supplies to local students.

Lieutenant Colonel Hwang Jeong-min, commander of the 73rd Battalion, said, “Conducting joint amphibious landing exercises with Marines from various countries was a great opportunity for all battalion members to feel pride in the Marine Corps’ unique mission of amphibious operations,” adding, “Based on confidence that we can complete missions for the country and its people in any environment, we will continue to build a strong image as a national strategic maneuver unit.”

Meanwhile, Second Lieutenant Shin Seung-hwan of the Special Reconnaissance Battalion postponed his discharge to prepare for the training with his company members, and five others including Corporal Park Young-min reportedly provided emergency care such as airway management to a foreigner who collapsed from shock while on leave at the intermediate port of call in Indonesia.