U.S. and Thai troops code and monitor simulated enemy cyberattacks during the Cobra Gold exercise at Camp Red Horse in Rayong, Thailand, March 1, 2026. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)
CAMP RED HORSE, Thailand — While thousands of troops taking part in the annual Cobra Gold exercise train in jungles and on beaches across Thailand, another group is fighting a simulated war from computer screens in an air-conditioned command post.
Now in its 45th year, Cobra Gold brings together about 8,000 service members from 30 countries for live-fire drills, amphibious landings and humanitarian exercises that began Feb. 24 and conclude Friday.
But many of those events are tied together through a larger fictional crisis that unfolds in a simulation from the command post at Camp Red Horse in Rayong, Thailand.
The scenario imagines a continent called Pacifica east of Japan, where a coup in the country of Sonora triggers a regional conflict. Sonora allies with a neighboring state, Arcadia, forcing multinational forces to respond.
A multinational team of cyber and space experts take part in the Cobra Gold cyber exercise at Camp Red Horse in Rayong, Thailand, March 1, 2026. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)
The objective is to expel enemy forces, restore pre-conflict borders and begin diplomatic negotiations.
Updates to the storyline are delivered through daily video briefings produced by the fictional World News Network, which adjusts the narrative based on the outcomes of training events across the exercise, said U.S. Army Col. Jeramy Hopkins, Cobra Gold’s chief of staff.
“This video is something that we receive in here daily that is built upon our actions and the enemy’s actions that helps inform the command post exercise,” he said during a briefing Monday at Camp Red Horse.
Training events linked to the scenario take place throughout Thailand and include amphibious assaults, jungle warfare drills and maritime strike exercises. Increasingly, however, commanders say the most advanced training is happening in the cyber and space domains.
Over the past decade, Cobra Gold has expanded its digital warfare components, with a growing emphasis on satellite communications, electronic warfare and cyber defense.
A computer monitors satellite communications during a Cobra Gold cyber exercise at Camp Red Horse in Rayong, Thailand, March 1, 2026. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)
“The purpose of exercises like [the cyber drill] is to be able to train cyber defenders to detect and respond to cyberattacks,” U.S. Air Force Maj. Paul Lucero, chief of operations for the cyber exercise, told Cobra Gold leaders Monday. “It is no longer a matter of if we’ll be breached, it is when.”
As Lucero spoke, teams from the United States, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea monitored computer networks and searched for simulated enemy activity.
Lucero highlighted the importance of cybersecurity for both military and civilian sectors, saying cybercrime costs are projected to reach $14 billion globally by 2028. Thailand alone is estimated to have lost about $2.3 billion to cybercriminals between 2022 and 2024.
“Our big focus here is helping to educate,” U.S. Air Force Maj. David Place, a chief of operations in the exercise, said after the briefing. “Not just from a technical level, but how we train our operators to speak and translate that into a common operational language.”
A map tracks the location of assets during the Cobra Gold exercise at Camp Red Horse in Rayong, Thailand, March 1, 2026. (Alex Wilson/Stars and Stripes)
Space operations are also playing a larger role at Cobra Gold. For the first time, teams are simulating offensive actions intended to disrupt an adversary’s satellite communications, said Col. Jeffrey Duplantis, the exercise’s chief of space operations.
“We have 51 personnel from across the nations to include two observers from the Philippines for the first time to be able to support this,” he said at the briefing. “This is the largest space contingent that we have had for Cobra Gold.”
The simulation includes equipment such as satellite uplink and GPS jammers.
Building partnerships in the space domain is increasingly important, said U.S. Army Capt. Brittany Chapman, who leads the space operations team.
“I think space has been such a nebulous concept that a lot of people don’t understand it,” she told Stars and Stripes after the briefing. “But we’re starting to recognize that partner nations are crucial in the fights that we’re going to be going towards in the future.”
