Democracies Send Message to China with Giant RIMPAC Exercise off Southern California

[TexasTowelie]

Ships, submarines and aircraft from the United States and 38 allied nations will gather in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California and Hawaii this month for the world’s largest naval exercise, the Navy announced Tuesday.

The biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise — RIMPAC for short — involves 38 surface warships, four submarines, 170 aircraft and 25,000 military personnel.

The exercise brings together naval and marine forces from the leading democracies in the region, including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand as well as the United States, Canada and Mexico.

RIMPAC 2022, scheduled to take place June 29 to Aug. 4, is the 28th exercise in the series that began in 1971.

Read more: https://timesofsandiego.com/military/2022/06/01/democracies-send-message-to-china-with-giant-rimpac-exercise-off-southern-california/

[Turbineguy]

1. I was in a multi nation Naval exercise in the Indian Ocean in 1976.

This was back when we were still allies with Iran. Other powers in the region were involved as well.

Russian trawlers lurked on the edge of the fleet to watch the goings on.

At a given moment the fleet was supposed to maneuver in a certain way, according to flag signals given by the flagship.

As it turned out, there were several different codebooks that were distributed to the individual ships. The "execute" flag went up and bedlam ensued. Our vessel was in several near misses with other ships. Eventually everything got sorted out and I got a nice congratulatory phone call from the Captain.

It was an exiting afternoon.