COVID-19: US Military Pursues War Games Amid Contagion
May 26, 2020
A robust schedule of military maneuvers and exercises is either underway or
planned for Europe and the Pacific this year, with more in store for 2021,
Ann Wright reports.
Fleet of 15 partner nations, exercise Rim of the Pacific 2014. (DoD, Shannon
Renfroe)
By Ann Wright
OpEdNews.com
During the pandemic the U.S. military is running the largest maritime
military maneuvers in the world, with Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) coming to
the waters off Hawaii Aug. 17-31, bringing 26 nations, 25,000 military
personnel, up to 50 ships and submarines and hundreds of aircraft.
Hawaii hasstringent measures to combat the spread of Covid-19, with a
mandatory 14-day quarantine for all persons arriving in the state; returning
residents as well as visitors. This quarantine is required until at least
June 30, 2020.
The U.S. Army is also pursuing a 6,000-person war game in Poland, June 5-19,
with a Polish airborne operation and a U.S.-Polish division-size river
crossing.
If these weren't too many military operations during an epidemic in which
personnel on 40 U.S. Navy ships have come down with the hyper-contagious
virus and during which military personnel and their families have been told
not to travel, plans are also underway for a U.S. Army division-sized
exercise in the Indo-Pacific region in less than a year. Known as Defender
2021, the U.S. Army has requested $364 million to conduct the war exercises
throughout Asian and Pacific countries.
The pivot to the Pacific, begun under the Obama administration, and
maintained by the Trump administration, is reflected in a U.S. National
Defense Strategy (NDS) that sees the world as "a great power competition
rather than counterterrorism and has formulated its strategy to confront
China as a long-term, strategic competitor."
Earlier in May, the U.S. Navy sent at least seven submarines, including all
four Guam-based attack submarines, several Hawaii-based ships and the San
Diego-based USS Alexandria to the western Pacific in what the Pacific Fleet
Submarine Force announced as simultaneous "contingency response operations"
for all of its forward-deployed subs. This was all in support of the
Pentagon's "free and open Indo-Pacific " policy - aimed at countering
China's expansionism in the South China Sea - and as a show of force to
counter ideas that the capabilities of U.S. Navy forces have been reduced by
Covid-19.
USS Theodore Roosevelt departs Apra Harbor following an extended visit to
Guam in the midst of the Covid-19 global pandemic. (U.S. Marine Corps,
Jordan E. Gilbert)
The U.S. military force structure in the Pacific will be changed to meet the
National Defense Strategy's perceived threat from China, beginning with the
U.S. Marine Corps creating new infantry battalions that will be smaller to
support naval expeditionary warfare and designed to support a fighting
concept known as expeditionary advanced base operations.
U.S. Marine forces will be decentralized and distributed across the Pacific
on islands or floating barge bases. As the Marine Corps eliminates much of
its traditional equipment and units, the Marines plan to invest in
long-range precision fires, reconnaissance and unmanned systems, doubling
the number of unmanned squadrons.
To effect this change in strategy, Marine infantry battalions will go down
to 21 from 24; artillery batteries will go to five down from two; amphibious
vehicle companies will be reduced from six to four' and F-35B and F-35C
Lightning II fighter squadrons will have fewer aircraft per unit, from 16
aircraft down to 10. The Marine Corps will eliminate its law-enforcement
battalions, its units that build bridges and will reduce the service
personnel by 12,000 in 10 years.
A Hawaii-based unit called a "Marine Littoral Regiment" is expected to have
1,800 to 2,000 Marines taken from the three infantry battalions based at
Kaneohe Marine Base. Most of the companies and firing batteries that will
make up a littoral anti-air battalion will come from units not currently
stationed in Hawaii.
The III Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Okinawa, Japan, the main Marine
unit in the Pacific region, will be changed to have three Marine littoral
regiments that are trained and equipped to operate within contested maritime
areas. The region will also have three Marine expeditionary units that are
globally deployable. The other two Marine expeditionary force units will
provide forces to the III MEF.
The U.S. military war games in Europe, "Defender Europe 2020," is already
underway with troops and equipment arriving at European ports. It will cost
about $340 million, which is roughly in line with what the U.S. Army is
requesting for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1, for the Pacific
version of the Defender series of war maneuvers.
It will take place at Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in northwest Poland.
More than 6,000 U.S. and Polish soldiers will participate the exercise,
named Allied Spirit. It was originally scheduled for May, and is linked
with Defender-Europe 2020, the Army's largest exercise in Europe in decades.
Defender-Europe was largely canceled because of the pandemic.
U.S. Army Reserve soldiers check vehicles once they arrive to Fallingbostel,
outside of Bergen-Hohne, Germany, in preparation for DEFENDER-Europe 20 on
Feb. 8, 2020. (Dod, Joseph Bush)
U.S. Army Europe is planning additional exercises over the coming months
focusing on training objectives originally outlined for Defender-Europe,
including working with equipment from pre-positioned stocks in Europe and
conducting airborne operations in the Balkans and Black Sea region.
In the current 2020 fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, the Army will conduct a
smaller version of Defender Pacific while Defender Europe will get more
investment and focus. But then attention and dollars will swing over to the
Pacific in fiscal-year 2021. Defender Europe will be scaled back next year.
The Army is requesting just $150 million to conduct the exercise in Europe,
according to the Army.
The U.S. military has 85,000 troops permanently stationed in the
Indo-Pacific region and is expanding its longstanding series of exercises
called Pacific Pathways by extending the time Army units are in countries
in Asia and the Pacific, including in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and Brunei. A division headquarters and several brigades would
have a South China Sea scenario where they will be around the South China
Sea and the East China Sea over the course of a 30- to 45-day period.
In 2019, under the Pacific Pathways exercises, U.S. Army units were in
Thailand for three months and four months in the Philippines. The U.S. Army
is in discussions with the Indian government about expanding military
exercises from roughly just a few hundred personnel up to 2,500 for a
duration of up to six months - which "gives us a presence in the region
longer as well without being permanently there," according to the U.S. Army
of the Pacific commanding general. Breaking from the larger exercise,
smaller U.S. Army units will deploy to countries such as Palau and Fiji to
participate in exercises or other training events.
The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Alexandria (SSN 757)
transits Apra Harbor as part of regularly scheduled operations in the
Indo-Pacific on May 5, 2020. (U.S. Navy/ Randall W. Ramaswamy)
In May, 2020, the Australian government announced that a delayed six-month
rotation of 2,500 U.S. Marines to a military base in Australia's northern
city of Darwin will go ahead based on strict adherence to Covid-19 measures
including a 14-day quarantine. The Marines had been scheduled to arrive in
April but their arrival was postponed in March because of the pandemic.
The remote Northern Territory, which had recorded just 30 Covid-19 cases,
closed its borders to international and interstate visitors in March, and
any arrivals must now undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days. U.S. Marine
deployments to Australia began in 2012 with 250 personnel and have grown to
2,500.
The Joint U.S. Defense facility Pine Gap- the U.S. Department of Defense,
Five Eyes and CIA surveillance facility that pinpoints airstrikes around the
world and targets nuclear weapons, among other military and intelligence
tasks - was also adapting its policy and procedures to comply with
Australian government COVID restrictions.
As the U.S. military expands its presence in Asia and the Pacific, one place
it will NOT be returning to is Wuhan, China. In October 2019, the Pentagon
sent 17 teams with more than 280 athletes and other staff members to the
Military World Games in Wuhan. Over 100 nations sent a total of 10,000
military personnel to the games in Wuhan last October.
The presence of a large U.S. military contingent in Wuhan just months before
the outbreak of the Covid-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, fueled a theory by
some Chinese officials that the U.S. military was somehow involved in the
outbreak, which now has been used by the Trump administration and its allies
in Congress and the media that the Chinese deliberately used the virus to
infect the world and adding justification for the U.S. military build-up in
the Pacific region.
