EXERCISE planners from more than 13 friendly nations have gathered for the Mid-Planning Conference for “Exercise Tradewinds 2023” (TW23). The conference is being conducted in a hybrid fashion.

According to the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), this conference is considered the biggest event in the planning cycle for the exercise, which is the only yearly US one of its kind that focuses only on the Caribbean.

This is the 37th year of the exercise, which was last held in Guyana in 2021. Exercise Tradewinds is a regionally oriented annual exercise that promotes regional security cooperation by involving security forces from partner nations, primarily from the Caribbean Basin, the US, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The focus of TW23 will be on countering regional threats executed in a Field Training Exercise (FTX) and Command Post Exercise (CPX).