U.S. and Indonesia test rocket systems in joint drill

U.S. and Indonesian forces fired rocket artillery and flew combat aircraft together during a live-fire exercise at Baturaja Combat Training Center on September 4 and 7, part of the ongoing Super Garuda Shield exercise in Indonesia.

The ground-fire portion combined U.S. Army M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems with Indonesian Army ASTROS II Mk6 launchers and Indonesian Marine Corps RM-70 Vampire launchers. In the air, Indonesian F-16 fighters flew alongside U.S. Army and Indonesian AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

“Today was a great example of working together to conduct safe and responsible training,” said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Ed Matthaidess, Army Forces commander for Super Garuda Shield, after the September 4 event. “It’s a huge coalition effort, a lot of synchronization goes into that.”

“The combined joint land strike demonstrated what the United States and Indonesia can achieve when we train together,” said U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Jonathan Bowman, fires and effects coordinator for Marine Rotational Force-Darwin. “We are grateful to our Indonesian counterparts and hosts for their support and for the opportunity to learn from one another. Exercises like Super Garuda Shield strengthen the cooperation we need to operate together effectively.”

Getting different rocket systems and aircraft from two militaries firing on the same range required participants to reconcile differences in equipment and procedure well before anyone pulled a trigger.

“Executing joint and multinational fires coordination is among the most demanding tasks in modern combined arms warfare,” said U.S. Army Capt. Eric Brown, a fires planner with the 4th Infantry Division.

Brown said aligning Army, Marine Corps and Indonesian capabilities meant working through differing technical requirements and doctrine, and credited the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control technology with helping units share targeting data and synchronize fires in real time.

For the crews on the ground, that coordination came down to repetition.

“Lots of practicing, lots of run-throughs,” said U.S. Army Sgt. Madeleine Rocha, a HIMARS crew member with the Iowa Army National Guard. “We made sure that everything runs seamlessly.”

Rocha said training alongside Indonesian and other partner forces gave crews a chance to see how other militaries approach the same problems and adjust their own procedures as the exercise progressed.

The live-fire event is one piece of a much larger exercise. Super Garuda Shield 2026, running from August 31 to September 11 across sites including Bandung, Jakarta, Lampung, Baturaja and North Kalimantan, involves roughly 4,700 personnel from 21 countries this year, according to Indonesia’s military. Originally a bilateral drill between the U.S. and Indonesia dating back to 2007, the exercise expanded into its current multinational format in 2022 as regional security concerns in the Indo-Pacific grew, and this year’s iteration also included a coordinated multinational parachute jump into Baturaja involving Indonesian, American, Indian, Japanese and French troops.

Indonesia has continued to describe its participation as consistent with a foreign policy of strategic non-alignment, having also conducted separate military exercises with China this year, even as it deepens training ties with the United States and other Western partners.