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Home : Media : News : News Article View

# Pacific Rim Airpower Symposium: Sharing Airspace, Saving Lives 

By Staff Sgt. Alexander Martinez

**HONOLULU, Hawaii --**Air force members from nations throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region gathered here Sept. 21 through 24 to discuss ways to improve cooperation, leadership and coordination efforts during the 2015 Pacific Rim Airpower Symposium.  

 

Attendees of the event, hosted by the Pacific Air Forces Vice Commander Maj. Gen. Mark Dillon, consisted of senior officer and enlisted airmen from the U.S., Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga and Vietnam. 

 

Dillon kicked off the symposium with opening remarks, highlighting the focus areas for the week: people, cooperation and opportunities within the realm of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

 

“Responding to HA/DR events required a concerted effort using all our collective recourses. During PAS, we will explore various roles and contributions members of our services, government and populations can make to HA/DR response -- contributions like those of the U.S. Air Force's own Senior Airman Manoj Khatiwada,” Dillon said. “Khatiwada is an aerospace medical technician with the 21st Medical Operations Squadron and was born in Nepal. As you can imagine, when he was first asked to join our Airmen in Nepal to assist the government with earthquake relief operations, he was filled with mixed emotions, seeing the city where he was born and raised destroyed.  

 

“Khatiwada came to the U.S. in 2009 after obtaining permanent residency through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. He joined our Air Force a few years ago and has been doing amazing things for us. No doubt, he played a critical link between the Nepalese and the 36th Contingency Response Group. What could have normally taken days to orchestrate, he was able to communicate within hours."

 

After opening remarks, Chief Master Sgt. Buddy Hutchison, PACAF command chief, began the first discussion session on senior enlisted development.

 

“There’s not one single way of how we approach enlisted development; there are multiple ways, and we learn from each other,” Hutchison said. “I think it’s important for us to be able to share ideas and concepts on topics that are important to all of us. I look forward to spending time learning and sharing ideas with all of you.” 

 

This year’s theme for the symposium was “Saving Lives ... Multinational Response to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.” Session topics supported the theme and included discussions on leveraging social media, technology and data sharing in HA/DR; women, peace and security matters in HA/DR; and Civil/Military cooperation in HA/DR and sharing of airspace, to name a few. 

 

Royal Malaysian air force Warrant Officer 2 Noorzaima Binti Mohd Noor discussed why she thinks the symposium is important to multilateral cooperation. 

 

“Attending this symposium will give me the opportunity to learn valuable information to take back with me to Malaysia and share with my [airmen],” Noor said. “There’s a lot of knowledge and experience here, and I can learn how to deal with problems or situations that would require cooperation with our partners.”

 

Attendees were also able to tour local historic sites including the USS Battleship Missouri Memorial and the WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument.    

 
 Previous PACRIM Airpower Symposiums have occurred in Australia, Japan and Thailand, and next year’s host is scheduled to be the Republic of Korea. 

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