Ex RIMPAC: World's Largest Naval Exercise

• 09 Jun 2022

The 2022 edition of the world's largest naval war games, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, will feature key US partners from around the globe, including India, Japan and Australia -- who have joined Washington in the Quad group -- and five nations bordering on the South China Sea, one of the world's most turbulent areas for military tensions.

• The exercises in Pacific waters reaching from the Hawaiian Islands all the way to southern California will see military units from 26 countries participating from June 29 to August 4.
• A "free and open Indo-Pacific" has been a US mantra as China has been building up its forces and expanding its reach in the region, including militarizing islands in the South China Sea, almost all of which it claims as its sovereign territory.
• Three nations with competing claims to China's -- the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei -- will take part in RIMPAC 2022. Indonesia, which borders the South China Sea and has seen recent maritime tensions with China, will also take part, as will Singapore, which sits at the southwestern entrance to the 1.3 million-square-mile sea.
• Meanwhile, the Quad countries -- the United States, India, Japan and Australia -- have been deepening military cooperation as all have seen increasing competition with China around the region.
• RIMPAC 2022 also includes Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga and the United Kingdom.