JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM — The world’s largest international maritime exercise concluded Thursday following more than a month of training events conducted in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California.
Twenty-five nations, 46 surface ships, five submarines, 17 land forces, and more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel participated in Rim of the Pacific 2018. This year’s RIMPAC iteration marked the 26th in the series that began in 1971 and is now held every two years.
Hosted by U.S. Pacific Fleet, RIMPAC 2018 was led by U.S. Vice Adm. John D. Alexander, commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet, who served as the combined task force commander.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our international team’s ability to successfully complete an exercise of this nature,” said Alexander. “Most importantly, we completed the exercise safely while still achieving national training objectives. This is a true testament to the talent and lasting partnerships we built through RIMPACs past and present, and will continue to build for the foreseeable future.”
Alexander said the involvement of so many different countries working together to successfully accomplish RIMPAC was a strong reminder of the unity coalition forces can exhibit in a real-world situation.
“Multinational operations are complicated,” he said. “It takes skill to assemble an international team and have it be successful. Throughout the duration of the exercise, from the planning conferences to the ships returning to port, this team proved they work great together and can adapt quickly to a dynamic environment.”
This year’s exercise included forces from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Republic of Korea, Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam.
Participating nations and forces exercised a wide range of capabilities and demonstrated the flexibility of maritime forces. These capabilities ranged from disaster relief and maritime security operations to sea control and complex warfighting
This exercise every two years is vitally important to military readiness for the United States and its partner nations. BZ to all those who participated here on Kaua`i, as well as throughout the Hawaiian islands and California. Thanks to our partner nations for participating. The world is a safer place when the good peoples of the world unite in common defence.
Now that RIMPAC is over, all those military personnel get shore passes before heading back home. So all those massage parlors and mama sans are happy to provide some rest and relaxation for all that “hard” work.