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Ships, Marines begin RIMPAC exercises

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – More than three-dozen naval ships and submarines are leaving their temporary berths at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Tuesday and organizing at sea for this year’s “Rim of the Pacific” international war games.

Fourteen nations and more than 20,000 military personnel, including a U.S. fleet of 25 Navy ships and submarines and a Coast Guard cutter, are participating in the biennial RIMPAC training off Hawaii that military officials have billed as the world’s largest maritime exercise. Three other nations have sent teams of observers for the exercises, which also includes ground and combat support forces and nearly 180 jets, helicopters, patrol craft and transport and refueling aircraft.

The at-sea operational phase of RIMPAC 2010, which officially kicked off June 23, begins Wednesday once all the ships and vessels have left Pearl Harbor and have organized into separate task groups for scripted play.

“This is the largest RIMPAC that we’ve had,” said Vice Adm. Richard “Rick” Hunt, who commands San Diego-based 3rd Fleet and is acting as the combined task force commander. The exercise “clearly focuses on maritime domain awareness dealing with expanded military operations across the complete spectrum of warfare.”

While the United States accounts for the largest group of participants this year, the exercise isn’t designed just for one force. “The maritime environment is just too big for any one country to tackle and manage,” Hunt said Tuesday in a teleconference briefing with reporters.

The exercises will incorporate unit-level training – planners can tailor individual drills to each force’s needs and specific requests – and let participating militaries come together in combined operations that sharpen interoperability between commanders and forces, including command and control and communications, and help build trust and cohesion. “It’s a meshing of different tactics and procedures and making sure that we can blend them together,” Hunt said. “We find that developing an understanding and working relationship early in our careers has huge paybacks as we come together,” he added.

RIMPAC has evolved since the first exercises were held in 1971, when it was largely focused on blue-water naval operations, Hunt said.

This year’s training includes maritime patrols, security operations and 50 percent more live-fire gunnery and missile exercises, conducted at various military ranges in and around the Hawaiian islands, than was done in 2008, he said. These include 20 air-to-air missile shoots and three “Sink-ex” events, where old, retired hulls serve as targets for air, surface and undersea weapons.

Hunt said the presence of littoral combat ship Freedom and Supreme, a stealthy frigate with the Singapore navy, will allow for expanded operations closer to shore and training in visit-board-search-seize missions and maritime interdiction operations “in ways perhaps we have not spent the time doing in the past.”

The San Diego-based Freedom is equipped with a partial surface warfare mission module and will be augmented with VBSS teams and helicopters to allow it to support maritime interdiction or noncombatant evacuation operations, he said. Exercise planners have carved out more shallow operating areas for the ship geared to “the way we believe with the surface package she will be utilized,” he said.

Two diesel submarines participating in the exercises – one from Japan, the other from South Korea – will inject into the exercise “the number one threat everybody has to deal with,” Hunt said. “The opportunity to work and operate against the very quiet diesel submarine provides very realistic training for us.”

Marines with several Hawaii-based units will operate from the sea during RIMPAC’s land phase and conduct over-the-horizon amphibious missions ashore that will incorporate Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory-led experiments. Other experimentation will include computer-assisted planning aids and electronic warfare sensor packages.

RIMPAC will culminate with the final tactical phase, a series of scenario-driven training events set to begin July 25, before the exercise ends Aug. 1.

Along with the U.S., participating nations include: Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. In addition, Brazil, India and New Zealand have sent teams of observers.

DISCUSS: RIMPAC 2010

On the web:

• RIMPAC exercise website: http://www.c3f.navy.mil/RIMPAC_2010.html

• Forces participating: http://www.c3f.navy.mil/RIMPAC_Participants_page.html

• On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/RIMPAC-2010/346615881992?y=wall&ref=ts