Within the framework of the Military Cooperation Plan conducted by Colombia and France 2025 – 2026, the French Military Forces of New Caledonia, through the Defense Attaché in Colombia, sent an invitation to the Military Forces to participate, for the first time, in the Joint Multinational Disaster Risk Management Exercise CROIX DU SUD 2025, where experiences such as the assistance and contribution of the Colombian Military Forces in the assistance of Hurricane IOTA on the Island of San Andrés were shared.
The Croix du Sud exercise has been held in the South Pacific biennially since 2002, under the coordination of the French Military Forces of New Caledonia (FANC), and its main objective is to assess the multinational military response capacity to a large-scale disaster that exceeds local resources.
Accepting the invitation, the General Command of the Military Forces sent on behalf of the Colombian Forces two officers, a captain and a lieutenant of Colombian National Army, members of the Joint Environmental and Disaster Risk Management Department, who, with their extensive experience in Environmental Management and Disaster Risk Management, have led the planning of the support of the Military Forces in the face of natural disasters associated with the phenomena of “El Niño” and “La Niña”.
The French Defense Attaché in Colombia extended her most sincere gratitude on behalf of the Senior Commander of the FANC, Major General Yann Latil, for the participation of the officers of the Colombian Military Forces in the Exercise. In addition, she highlighted the experience transmitted to the participants, noting that the lessons learned shared with the French Military Forces are very valuable both for the French Pacific islands and for the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, as they face similar risks to Colombia because of climate change. In this way, there is no doubt that the exchange of knowledge and experience by the two military Forces contributes to better support in the event of a disaster in the sister territories due to their important maritime specificity.
The experience of Captain Carlos Mauricio González Ardila in the assistance of tropical cyclone disasters, derived from his participation for a year in the assistance, rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Islands of Providencia and Santa Catalina due to the transit of Hurricane IOTA, aroused the interest of the FANC in expanding the role of Colombia in the exercise, going from being observers to Force generators, through the assignment of the role of Battle Watch Captain (BWC), so the captain and the lieutenant served as an essential part of the simulated operation, in charge of supervising operations and providing technical recommendations to the command.
The 2025 edition was around the response to the transit of the simulated cyclone “Vega”, which disturbed the French islands of Wallis (8,088 inhabitants) and Futuna (3,063 inhabitants), being supported from New Caledonia, 2,100 km to the southwest, equivalent to three hours of flight.
For two weeks, 2000 military personnel from 23 countries, 13 aircraft and 5 warships carried out the exercise in 5 phases: Scouting, Recovery, Support, Stabilization and Redeployment, where joint training activities were carried out, such as parachuting, parachuting of humanitarian aid, air transportation of humanitarian aid, search and rescue of aircraft wrecked at sea, first aid, search and rescue in collapsed structures, search and rescue in aquatic and underwater environments, road clearance, maritime rescue of non-combatants in confined conditions, workshops by stations, naval passage and hydrographic studies, among others.
The participating military forces were divided into force generators and observers, being France, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Chile, Fiji, the Philippines, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Peru, Tonga, Indonesia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, Germany and Colombia, for their experience in the IOTA, force generating countries; and Ecuador, Japan, Nauru, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh, observer countries. At the same time, Pacific governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross, the Sovereign Order of Malta, Secours Catholique Caritas France and France Volontaires participated.
For the first time, Colombia participated in this exercise and the Colombian officers were integrated into the Headquarters of the Joint Task Force (CJTF), from where the air, land and maritime operations were directed, communications, logistics operations and inter-institutional coordination were managed, in order to continue positioning Colombia as a Force-generating country and thus in the same way contribute with practical exercises in future editions, strengthening multinational ties and bringing to the country experiences that led the implementation, in the military, of new knowledge in risk management and environmental management in the face of possible natural disaster environments.
Source: Strategic Communications General Command of the military forces
