US, Indonesia Kick Off ‘Largest Ever’ Super Garuda Shield Exercise

By Editor On Aug 27, 2025

Indonesia and the United States yesterday launched a major joint military exercise with forces from 12 other nations, which commanders from both nations described as a bid to increase interoperability and improve deterrence in the region.

The annual “Super Garuda Shield” drills will take place in the capital Jakarta and several locations on the western island of Sumatra and the Riau archipelago. The drills will involve land, air, and maritime components, including staff exercises, cyber defense drills, and a live-fire event that will bring the 11-day exercise to a close on September 4.

In a speech at the opening ceremony, Gen. Tandyo Budi Revita, the deputy commander of the Indonesian armed forces, said that this year’s iteration of the exercise will focus on strengthening regional ties at a time of growing strategic friction. “It serves as a joint exercise where we stand together to respond to every challenge quickly and precisely,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

The Garuda Shield exercise was established between the U.S. and Indonesian militaries in 2007, and forms a primary pillar of the two nations’ security relations. The “Super” was added to the title of the exercise in 2022, when it was expanded to include a slate of new participants.

With more than 4,100 Indonesian and 1,300 American troops taking part, this year’s Super Garuda Shield will be the “largest… ever,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in a speech at yesterday’s opening ceremony.

The U.S. and Indonesia will be joined by participants from Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Brazil, Brunei, India, South Korea, New Zealand, and Thailand. Several other Asian nations, including Cambodia, India, and Papua New Guinea, will also join as observers.

Paparo said that the broad participation reflected “a commitment to our partnership, a commitment to the sovereignty of each country through the prism of mutual respect.” He also said that the exercise would help boost deterrence against those seeking to revise the current regional order. This can only be interpreted as a reference to China, which has become more active in asserting its maritime power across Asia, including in the South and East China seas.

“It represents deterring anyone that would hope to change the facts on the ground using violence with the collective determination of all participants to uphold the principles of sovereignty,” Paparo said, as per the AFP news agency.

“We do this by getting better every day across all domains … so if the unforgiving hour comes when we need each other as partners, we pick up the phone and we begin operating from a basis of deep trust.”

The steady expansion of Super Garuda Shield reflects the growing scope of defense cooperation between the U.S. and Indonesia. Like other major multilateral exercises, including the larger Balikatan exercises that it hosts with the Philippines, the expanded drills signal Washington’s commitment to maintaining a security presence in Southeast Asia at a time of growing Chinese power and ambition.

At the same time, Indonesia, while welcoming closer U.S. engagement on this front, continues to take pains to emphasize its strategic autonomy and foreign policy non-alignment, which is reflected in its balanced spread of defense engagements.

A recent Lowy Institute report on Southeast Asia’s defense partnerships observed that Indonesia conducted 115 more bilateral and multilateral military exercises in 2023 and 2024, more than any other nation in Southeast Asia. In addition to partners like the U.S. and Japan, this also included drills with China and Russia. While the scope of these drills was comparatively small, and the U.S. remains Indonesia’s top exercise partner, the Lowy report said that these other drills “demonstrate that Indonesia remains a non-aligned actor in an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region.”

This further suggests that even as defense ties with the U.S. develop, Indonesia under President Prabowo Subianto remains very far from enlisting in a U.S.-led effort to contain Chinese power.

-The Diplomat