NEW SECURITY LEARNING

US Navy trains foreign governments in anti-terrorism

The US Naval Education and Training Security Field Activity International Training Centre (NITC) is currently running a four week programme aimed at giving representatives from allied nations knowledge tools to combat piracy and terrorism on a domestic level.

In a statement, Commander Chris Heaney on NITC, said

“This course is meant far all international officers and civilian equivalents detailed to government positions. However, the content is most applicable to individuals who will return to their respective countries and have direct influence in the areas of anti-terrorism and anti-piracy operations with their service their country and their region of the world”.

The course, funded by the US State Department’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme adds to last year’s success of training over 7,000 students from 130 allied nations.

Kay Judkins, programme policy manager at the Defence Department’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) commented that

“This is building a lot of influence. …that is really what this program is all about: influencing minds and hearts. It’s about cooperation, forming relations and building partnership capacity”.

Students taking part in the four-week training course come from nations including Algeria, South Korea, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, South Africa and Yemen.

NITC is renowned for its innovative use of technology for training. Earlier this year students from Saudi Arabia attended NITC to visit the Institute for Human and Machine cognition (IHMC), observing the advances in robotics being pioneered there.

Following the visit, Commander Heans said

“Community interaction with our International Military Students is a crucial aspect of the NITC curriculum. This visit to IHMC played an important role in helping build stronger international partnerships, a key component of our Maritime Strategy”.