At the rim of the Pacific

Avatar for Ken PoleBy Ken Pole | September 19, 2012

Estimated reading time 14 minutes, 27 seconds.

The Rim of the Pacific Exercise, or RIMPAC, is the largest military deployment of its kind. Every two years, at the invitation of the United States Navy, the armed forces of an increasing number of countries congregate around Hawaii to strut their stuff. It’s as close to combat as it gets – so real, in fact, that RIMPAC 2012 saw the Canadian submarine Victoria fire upon and sink a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship in 15,480 feet of water, southwest of Kauai.
No fewer than 25,000 personnel from 22 countries, including 1,400 Canadians, participated in RIMPAC this year. Running from June 29 to Aug. 3, it was the 23rd RIMPAC since its establishment in 1971. This year’s exercises involved 42 surface ships, six submarines and more than 200 aircraft, as well as land forces, and included Canadian troops who worked with the U.S. Marine Corps on amphibious assaults.

Overall command of RIMPAC 2012 fell to Vice-Admiral Gerald Beaman, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, based in San Diego, Calif. Its usual sphere of operations covers 50 million square miles of the eastern and northern Pacific, where major maritime trade routes and lines of communication are economically and strategically critical to the U.S. and its Pacific partners.

Canada and Australia have been involved with the U.S. since the first RIMPAC, but the latest exercise saw non-U.S. officers in key command positions for the first time. Brigadier General Mike Hood of the Royal Canadian Air Force, who has logged some 3,000 hours in tactical CC-130 Hercules operations and is now at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, headed up the Combined Forces Air Component Command (CFACC). His maritime counterpart was Commodore Stu Mayer of the Royal Australian Navy.

“I wear two hats in the exercise,” Hood told Canadian Skies in an interview that took place during RIMPAC. “I have my CFACC hat and I execute that through command of the Combined Air Operations Centre – and two of the CAOP directors are Canadian.” They were Colonel Blaise Frawley, a CF-18 Hornet pilot and commander of 17 Wing RCAF Training Centre in Winnipeg, Man., and Colonel Ian Lightbody, a CH-124 Sea King pilot and commander of 12 Wing at Shearwater, N.S. “They brought a wealth of experience in fighter and maritime operations, which is really our bread and butter on the exercise,” Hood said.

He also wore a “national hat” in that all the RCAF assets reported to him through Colonel Carl Wohlgemuth, who has flown fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters and now heads up the Air Component Coordination (Pacific) at CFB Esquimalt, B.C. A fourth senior Canadian, Rear Admiral Ron Boyd, was deputy commander of the Joint Task Force.

During RIMPAC, Hood, a Montreal native whose RCAF career has mostly been at CFB Trenton, Ont., including command of 8 Wing, was headquartered at U.S. Air Force Base Hickam, which shares space with Honolulu International Airport. When one of the aircraft under Hood’s command was on the ground at Hickam, it was under civilian air traffic control, lined up with commercial airliners and other users. But once airborne, aircraft transitioned to RIMPAC control.

Hood told Canadian Skies that “it’s kind of immaterial to the aircrew; they’ll be under positive control and that happens very quickly.” Exercise areas were far removed from civilian air traffic routes in and out of Hawaii. At the conclusion of an operation, RIMPAC aircraft were transitioned back to civilian control for landing.

In addition to Royal Canadian Navy ships HMCS Algonquin, HMCS Ottawa, three maritime coastal defense vessels and the submarine HMCS Victoria, the RCAF deployed a total of 15 aircraft. They included four CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft from 405 Squadron and the Maritime Proving and Evaluation Unit at 14 Wing Greenwood, N.S., and 407 Squadron at 19 Wing Comox, B.C. Seven CF-18 Hornets from 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron at 3 Wing Bagotville, Que., and 409 Tactical Fighter Squadron in Cold Lake, Alta., were added to the gaggle, as were two air-to-air refuellers, a CC-150 Polaris from 437 Transport Squadron at 8 Wing Trenton, Ont., a CC-130H(T) Hercules from 435 Transport & Rescue Squadron at 17 Wing in Winnipeg, Man., and a pair of CH-124 Sea Kings from 443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron, 12 Wing Shearwater, N.S.

Other air assets under Hood’s command were a Royal Australian Air Force “Wedgetail” – a highly modified Boeing 737-based airborne early warning and control platform – and U.S. B-52 Stratofortress bombers, F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-15C Eagles, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and other countries’ fighters and support aircraft. The U.S. also deployed Carrier Air Wing 11 with F/A-18C Hornets, F/A-18E Super Hornets, E-2C Hawkeyes, EA-6B Prowlers, C-2A Greyhounds and SH-60F and HH-60H Seahawk helicopters, aboard the nuclear-powered USS Nimitz, which is normally based at Everett, Wash.

“I joke that it’s kind of nice to be a Canadian airman commanding air operations that include a carrier air wing,” Hood said. “It doesn’t happen very often – if ever. . . .

It’s certainly a humbling opportunity.” In fact, Hood probably had more air power at his fingertips than General Charles Bouchard had as NATO mission commander for Operation Unified Protector against the Gadhafi regime in Libya last year.

The key to a successful exercise of RIMPAC’s scale was smooth and effective interoperability, necessitating a year of planning even before Hood was advised last January that he would be the exercise’s air boss. “In today’s world, we need as many friends as we can get; everything that we’re going to do, we’re not going to do alone,” Hood said. “When I say ‘we,’ I don’t necessarily mean Canada per se; I mean like-minded countries and allies. So, being as interoperable as we can be is key.”

Besides the three original RIMPAC participants, 2012 involved Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Tonga and the United Kingdom. Why not China, which is playing an increasing role in the Pacific and its shipping routes?

Hood pointed out that RIMPAC is U.S.-led and that while the U.S. is “actively engaged with the Chinese at strategic levels,” the military aspect of the relationship probably is still immature. “I think, over time, you would see a much more operational and tactical engagement with our Chinese counterparts,” he said. “Relationships . . . and trust take time to build, and transparency of intent, and then when it’s time to take that relationship to the next level, certainly RIMPAC is a fantastic opportunity.”

That dovetailed with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s earlier dismissal of suggestions that a sharper focus on the Asia-Pacific region could fuel conflict in the area. The U.S. Navy currently has approximately 285 ships, with half of them tasked on each coast, but about 60 per cent will be assigned to the Pacific as part of a new strategy to increase the U.S. presence in the region by the end of this decade.

“Our relationship with China: we approach it in a very clear-eyed way,” Panetta said at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual regional security conference in Singapore. “We are not naive about the relationship and neither is China. We both understand the differences we have, we both understand the conflicts we have, but we also both understand that there really is no other alternative but for both of us to engage and to improve our communications and to improve our military-to-military relationship.”

There is also the question of whether the enhanced role in RIMPAC could flag a declining transatlantic role for Canada. Not so, Hood said, citing Canada’s participation in NATO operations as well as the combat mission in Afghanistan over the past decade. “Now that operations are reducing in numbers over there, it allows us greater opportunity to do the types of things we’d like to do in the Pacific. . . . It’s a big chunk of water, with a lot of countries, and it’s integral to both Canada’s peace and security – both military and economic. So we’ll always have a role in the Pacific. I just think it’s a matter of how much energy we can devote to it with a military of our size.”

He mentioned humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in response to tsunamis that devastated parts of Indonesia in 2004 and Japan last year. “These are countries that we will be working with in the future, so RIMPAC just provides such an awesome opportunity to work closely together. The theme of RIMPAC is `Capable, Adaptive, Partners’ and our goal is to be able to better integrate with like-minded nations in the Pacific.”

With RIMPAC 2012 barely in the history books, the focus now is on post-operation assessments “so that the people who come after us learn from things that could have been done better or training objectives that we should add.” It’s a process long institutionalized within the RCAF. “Every day, we’re talking about lessons learned; it’s a much more dynamic approach,” Hood said. “The RCAF has invested a lot of energy in this.”

It won’t be long before planning for RIMPAC 2014 begins. Thinking ahead, Hood suggested that since he’s now based in Ottawa – which isn’t known for its balmy winters – there may be another factor to consider. “I wish they had this exercise in January and February,” he chuckled. “Perhaps I’ll put that into the post-op report!”

Having never finished an engineering degree (“probably a service to aviation,” Ken says), Ken Pole has had a lifelong passion for things with wings. The longest-serving continuous member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa, Ont., he has written about aerospace in all its aspects for more than 30 years. When not writing, he’s an avid sailor, diver and photographer.

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