SINGAPORE –
The 24th annual Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT) exercise concluded on Sep. 19, 2025, following 14 days of collaboration among 11 Indo-Pacific allies and partners during sea phase, focused on the shared maritime security challenges of the region.
SEACAT is a multilateral exercise designed to strengthen cooperation among Southeast Asian countries and provide mutual support toward a common goal of addressing crises, contingencies, and illegal activities in the maritime domain with standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures. Shore-phase occurred from Aug. 5-8.
“SEACAT brings together navies and maritime agencies across the Indo-Pacific to improve regional security,” said Cmdr. Jimmy Harmon, officer-in-charge of future operations assigned to Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific/Task Force 73 (COMLOG WESTPAC/CTF-73). “From an operations standpoint, it’s a chance to rehearse our coordination, improve interoperability, and strengthen trust among partners. We’re working through scenarios that mirror real-world challenges.”
During the SEACAT sea phase, participating nations tracked and intercepted a simulated vessel sailing through Southeast Asian waters. This at-sea training tests the partners’ ability to coordinate across borders, cueing maritime patrol aircraft and sharing operational pictures between national operation centers. By exercising these complex scenarios in real time, SEACAT participants enhanced their collective capacity to detect, deter, and counter illicit maritime activity in accordance with international law.
This year’s SEACAT also involved an operation center seminar that featured presentations, live question and answer sessions, and panel discussions, led by Lt. Cmdr. Alex Falten, senior intelligence officer assigned to COMLOG WESTPAC/CTF-73, with representatives from all participating nations, as well as international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and academia.
“We focus on illicit maritime activities such as smuggling, illegal fishing, and piracy. These are real concerns for many of our partners,” said Falten. “The intelligence cell collects, analyzes, and disseminates information across borders in a way that’s timely and actionable. We also examine how to integrate open-source tools with national systems.”
Additionally, Falten was in charge of simulating so-called “dark” vessels transiting throughout Southeast Asian waters that participating agencies and navies were challenged to locate, track and report during the sea phase of SEACAT 25. Participants utilized the same open source maritime situational awareness software, known as SeaVision, to locate and track Falten’s vessels in order to test the integrity and fluidity of their information-sharing practices with each other.
SEACAT 2025 saw the return of SeaVision, a training workshop meant to introduce or refamiliarize participating naval forces to the web-based maritime situational awareness platform. SeaVision is a low-cost visualization and management tool that has the ability to quickly add and correlate multiple data sources, making it the ideal apparatus to employ in such a vast and diverse maritime region.
“Exercises like SEACAT build the relationships and readiness that allow us to act quickly and effectively in response to maritime activity in the region,” said Capt. Axel Steiner, chief of staff for COMLOG WESTPAC/CTF-73. “SEACAT is intended to foster confidence in multinational coordination and interoperability, and also serve as a forum to address shared maritime security concerns. Our objective is to design each iteration of the exercise to stay relevant to the concerns of our allies and partners in Southeast Asia.”
SEACAT demonstrates shared commitment to maritime partnership, security, and stability in the Indo-Pacific. 12 nations participated in SEACAT 2025, including Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Singapore and the United States.
7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy’s largest forward-deployed numbered fleet and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
*This article has been edited to correct the number of participating nations.