French and Thai navies hold joint training exercise
The French frigate Vendémiaire docked at Bangkok Port on Monday (April 1) for joint military training exercises with the Royal Thai Navy (RTN).
The ship is on the six-month long “ASIE” mission organised with the cooperation of Southeast Asian countries and members of Indo-Pacific Maritime Coordination Centre. Its mission in Thailand will last until Saturday (April 6).
Commander Sébastien Drouelle said on Tuesday that the current ASIE mission aims to strengthen cooperation and relations with Southeast Asian nations and their naval forces after being suspended for four years due to the pandemic.
“There have been several changes made to the ship as well as in the RTN, so we need to meet to synchronise our communications as well as participate in joint training on technical and navigation aspects,” he said.
Drouelle said the ship left New Caledonia, a French territory in the southwest Pacific Ocean, first mooring in Indonesia then sailing to Timor-Leste and to Thailand. After it leaves Bangkok, The Vendémiaire will head to Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Australia.
The Vendémiaire, constructed in 1993 in the Saint-Nazaire shipyard, was designed for humanitarian service, surveillance missions, specifically anti-smuggling, and the defence of French interests far from the homeland, such as fisheries.
The ship’s name refers to the month of the grape harvest on the 18th-century calendar at the time of the French Revolution.
The Vendémiaire is 93.5 metres bow to stern, 14 metres in width and 36.4 metres in height.
It carries rapid-firing cannons at the front. A helicopter is onboard for short-distance surveillance and transportation. It’s crewed by 94 officers.
