The most important naval exercise between Indonesia and Australia, the biennial NEW HORIZON, is currently taking place off Surabaya, Java with participants including HMA Ships Arunta and Sirius and ships of the Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL).
The exercise will incorporate both anti-submarine and anti-air warfare components, tactical manoueveuring, replenishments at sea and communications, as well as a gunnery and a helicopter exercise. There will also be a harbour phase. TNI-AL units will include two warships, a helicopter and a maritime patrol aircraft.
NEW HORIZON encompasses a series of combined training activities, such as basic mariner and navigational skills, designed to promote interoperability, professionalism and trust between the naval forces in the maritime domain.
As highlighted in ASPI's Strategic Insight Waves of opportunity Enhancing Australia–Indonesia maritime security cooperation, by author Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, growing submarine acquisitions in the region could bring new operational challenges for the Indonesian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy.
"Both navies can consider submarine incident scenarios in critical chokepoints, such as the Lombok Strait, including by drawing up a joint response plan," Supriyanto wrote. He also suggested NEW HORIZON could be extended in future to include "more complex and demanding scenarios" with "an expanded location beyond the Timor Sea, such as the Sulawesi Sea or the South China Sea".
Upon completion of NEW HORIZON, the two RAN ships will rejoin HMAS Stuart, which has just completed a logisitcs resupply visit at Sabah in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, before returning to Australia.
Overall, the deployment by the RAN Task Group has involved visits to India, Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia and is part of the Navy’s routine regional engagement activities in North, South, and South East Asia.