On Friday at. Price Barracks, BATSUB and the BDF held a joint training closing ceremony for a Field Fire training course which also had the participation of the Coast Guard, the Police and regional forces from the Caribbean.
We learned more about it form the BDF commander:
Azariel Loria, Brigadier General
"We did planning with Batsub, every year we do planning and we planned one year out to do various types of training and the training we need the most, and what we had tried to do in the past especially with Batsub is he asked up what is it that we would want to do an essentially we want to do a refresher because we are doing our own trading as well but then from time to time we would need to contact them, check our notes and see what they are doing right what we are doing that is not right and we improve on our doctrine and so Over the past year we said that we are going to do a series of courses in trainings and refreshers during the month of October and November it culminated today we did the FFQ, we call it the force field firing qualification course with the junior NCO'S Training, tracking courses. the students it is not on me to invite the international students but it is CEO BATSUB's prerogative and specifically the defense attaché that is located in Jamaica, Colonel A Broaster so he was here today and did the closing ceremonies so he identifies the students from the region in today's graduation ceremony we had from Trinidad, Barbados I think we had from Turks and Caicos, Jamaica."
Admiral Elton Bennett, Commandant at Belize Coast Guard
"So we achieved a whole lot these past few months working along with the British army training support unit in Belize working along with the Belize Defense Force, members of the police department as it relates to tactical training. We have achieved field firing training, shooting and sniper training, senior officers training as well so it's very important for us to have these opportunities where we can train together because quite often we are required to work together in a very risky environment where we may have different techniques and tactics to achieve operational objectives. But when we can conduct training like this shoulder to shoulder doing training and understanding where we each other agencies are in terms of their techniques and then standardize that then we have achieved a whole lot where we can apply in the operating environment. It means a lot to us."
"This is not only a few weeks of training. As a matter of fact at the joint operational level, at the joint intelligence and operating center where we all sit down with the different agencies and we analyze, we share intelligence and we conduct operational planning and execute from there so we are joined at the hip as it relates to operations. So training like these complements what we are already doing so it's not that the extent of our interoperability is based on being here, only it is much deeper than that."
