March 28, 2025

The FALINTIL-Forças de Defesa de Timor-Leste (F-FDTL), through the Service Support Unit, carried out a two-kilometer walking exercise today from Fatuahi to the Metinaro Service Base (UAS) Metinaro.

In an interview, the Commander of the Service Support Unit (UAS), Infantry Major Horácio dos Santos, said that an activity we carried out this morning, called the Forced March exercise, is something that our military personnel always carry out every year, in addition to participating in the planning matrix of our Service Support Unit every year. “The main objective of this walking exercise is that there are three aspects that we consider, first, we want to test the capacity of the military, we need the physical condition of the forces as well as their mentality, capacity and knowledge, this is what we do when the state assigns a mission to the Armed Forces through the command, another is to familiarize ourselves with the local communities but more importantly to familiarize ourselves with the terrain, how can our soldiers know these areas, another we do to reflect on FALINTIL Day, because this is our Service Support Unit to show the people of Timor-Leste that we are ready to carry out any mission in our country.

He added that the total number of soldiers who walked today was 105 to do this exercise. We have more troops than that, but since some of our members are doing security in the unit and some are fulfilling the mission, we are here today to do this exercise, he said. (UAS) Metinaro, however the exercise started in Fatuahi and ended at the Service Support Unit (UAS) Metinaro base with a distance of 21 kilometers.

F-FDTL Media