In November 2024, Brunei hosted the joint Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) in partnership with the US Navy and Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). This year’s exercise was also attended and advised by a group of defense industry experts from the US Marine Corps Rotational Forces. CARAT serves as a strictly bilateral series of drills between the United States Armed Forces and the Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF) which aims to advance regional security, cooperation, and interoperability.
US subject matter experts were able to educate and train RBAF counterparts on equipment handling and repair, non-lethal weapon application, data analysis skills, and general self-defense readiness. These themes are consistent with USINDOPACOM’s longstanding promotion of a “safe, secure, free and open Indo-Pacific," not the least of which including maritime domain awareness in the South China Sea. This vision, shared by ASEAN countries including Brunei is critical to ensuring traditional senses of security as well as commercial peace in a geoeconomically-connected world.
US defense contractors, equipment producers, and ancillary service providers should continue to take note of Brunei’s increasingly prominent role and partnership with the US in this sector. Maritime contestations and jurisdictional disconnects are becoming increasingly fraught in and around the Indo-Pacific. As such, collaborative approaches to security and the people-to-people connections we make remain the best means of deescalating tensions and ensuring a stable security stage and subsequently, prosperous business environment.
