RIMPAC: American Power Tools

"We call it the Asian rebalance because if it was referred to as a pivot it would imply we are turning our backs on somebody and we aren't."
"Clearly from the navy perspective we have moved ships out to the Pacific. ... Our CNO (chief of naval operations) sees the Pacific as the priority right now."
United States Rear Admiral Pat Hall

The USS Ronald Reagan is a nuclear-powered air carrier vessel, a huge warship with a deck around the size of a football field staffed by hundreds of American servicemen and women all doing their jobs on deck at the same time, performing tasks specific to their training, identifiable by colours they wear. It is a colossal grey-metal hulled 100,000-tonne ocean leviathan capable of maintaining five thousand sailors at sea for ten months at a stretch. And it is, basically, an airport afloat on the sea, capable of launching over 100 warplane sorties daily.

WATERS WEST OF THE KOREAN PENINSULA (July 21, 2014) An F/A-18E Super Hornet from the Royal Maces of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 27 launches from the flight deck of the U.S. Navy's forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73). George Washington and its embarked air wing, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5, provide a combat-ready force that protects and defends the collective maritime interests of the U.S. and its allies and partners in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Chris Cavagnaro/Released)

It is currently in the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii, demonstrating its truly amazing capabilities during RIMPAC exercises. The Reagan is one of America's eleven aircraft carriers and its size and power and capabilities, launching jets in a matter of mere seconds from zero to over 200 km/h by catapults,with the ear-splitting roar of their split-second ascent resounding across the water, and amazing those gathered to witness the technological feats of advanced weaponry truly does represent naval power.

Among those gathered to watch as each of those launches takes off with split-second precision and speed, are Chinese sailors and journalists, invited for the first time by the United States to take part in the immense international naval exercise, the Rim of the Pacific, the largest naval war games ever to be staged. For Russia and China, both of which are occupying themselves and their state treasuries to upgrading their own naval fleets, the American fleet of nuclear-powered carriers projects powers they envy and can only as yet dream of attaining for themselves.

PACIFIC OCEAN (July 16, 2014) An F/A-18F Super Hornet, assigned to the Bounty Hunters of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 2, takes off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ronald Reagan is participating in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2014. Twenty-two nations, more than 40 ships and submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel are participating in RIMPAC exercise from June 26 to Aug. 1, in and around the Hawaiian Islands. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jonathan Nelson/Released)

When and if Beijing succeeds in its determination to build its own fleet to the powerful dimensions of America's, the spectre of a changing world order will likely become a grim reality. Grim principally for South Korea, Japan the Philippines and Vietnam, all agitatedly anticipating China's next moves in its claims that it alone owns an immense sweep of the western Pacific that all had regarded heretofore as the "global commons".

China is also developing powerful new long-range anti-ship missiles whose reality could possibly have the effect of warning all American surface warships that their time navigating and 'owning' the South China Sea and the East China Sea belong to the past. Evacuating those vast oceanic areas may become a necessity both to preserve their own existence and to bypass the possibility of a war contending for common space in an area China claims as its very own. At which time Beijing will float its own powerful carriers, immune to any level of neighbourly challenges from any source.

For the time being, suspicion has been set aside -- at least on the Western side, in the generous invitation for China's fleet such as it is, to join with the invited members of the international fleet alongside America's in this display of comradely naval interplay, with each nation's representatives showing off their technical advances and personnel capabilities, learning from one another, usefully coordinating with one another; a wary but relaxed-for-the-moment naval comradeship.

July 22, 2014 · by globalaviationreport · in Fighter Aircraft, Military Aviation ·

Royal Canadian Air Force CF-188 Hornet aircraft land at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA on July 17, 2014, where they are checked, refueled, and loaded with practice 20mm ammunition and inert MK82 bombs, during the Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) – video courtesy of CF Combat Camera: 

And it would generally have been so, quite relaxed and communal auguring well for the future where each nation's seagoing component of their military is given a clear understanding of the operations of the other. If it were not for the damning presence of a trailing Chines [spy] intelligence ship bringing up the rear of the Chinese fleet.

As for the cost to put one of those nuclear-powered aircraft carriers on the deep waters of the Globe: a cool $15-billion each.