Ann Wright reports on the 2026 RIMPAC exercise and the participation of a submarine that targeted an Iranian vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka in March.
Guided-missile destroyer USS Chafee conducts a replenishment-at-sea with the Royal New Zealand Navy auxiliary oiler replenishment ship HMNZS Aotearoa during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2022 exercises in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California. (U.S. Indo-Pacific Command / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
By Ann Wright
As the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress continues to ramp up “China is our enemy” rhetoric, we are also approaching the 30th year of the United States organizing the largest naval war practice in the world, known as “Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC).”
For 37 days from late June through the end of July, the RIMPAC war “games” will be held in the waters off the state of Hawaii. This year 31 countries have sent naval, air and land military forces to Hawaii for RIMPAC. The exercise is intended to increase tactical proficiency and coordination among the navies of participating nations, as well as bolstering the appearance of U.S. hegemony.
Interestingly, 50 percent of the participating countries are members or “partners” of NATO, the NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization. Eight of the 10 NATO countries are from Europe: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Canada is the only other NATO member from the Western Hemisphere aside from the host country, the United States. Five of the six NATO “partners” have Pacific Ocean coasts: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Korea and Colombia.
Israel will also have a presence in RIMPAC, as it continues to weave itself into the fabric of the U.S. military. This amidst Israel’s ongoing wars in the Middle East, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the destruction of southern Lebanon and the war on Iran.
Although RIMPAC has not specified what the role of the Israeli military delegation is, one can surmise that they will act as liaison officers, planners, observers, or staff officers participating in command-and-control and multinational planning activities and giving lessons-learned in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
US Navy Involvement in US-Israeli War on Iran
On Feb. 28, the Trump administration allowed itself to get suckered into joining Israel in attacking Iran. The massive bombings and missile attacks from the U.S. and Israel assassinated the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior Iranian officials on the first day of the war on Iran.
Also killed on Feb. 28, the first day of the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran, were 156 civilians, including 120 school children when a U.S. missile destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebe Elementary School school in Minab, southern Iran.
One of the five submarines in 2026 RIMPAC is the U.S. Navy’s USS Charlotte.
On March 4, five days after the U.S.- Israel war on Iran began, the USS Charlotte torpedoed and sunk the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena in international waters 19 nautical miles off the southern tip of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. At the time of the attack, Dena had a crew of 136 personnel and only 32 survived.
According to reports, the remains of 20 of the deceased were not recovered.
It is the only instance since World War II in which a United States Navy submarine sank a surface vessel using torpedoes.
The Iranian ship was 2300 miles from Iran, having participated in the multilateral naval exercise MILAN 2026 in February as well as the International Fleet Review 2026 held at the Indian port of Visakhaptnam.
The U.S. sent U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Steve Koehler, the highest ranking naval officer in the Pacific Command, to the International Fleet Review. Ironically, a U.S. Navy release revealed that a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft took part and conducted anti-submarine warfare drills with other participating forces in MILAN 2026.
The United States Navy was to have sent the Arleigh Burke Class guided-missile destroyer USS Pinckney (DDG-91), but participation was cancelled at the last minute for “undisclosed operational reasons.”
According to an article in the Maritime Executive written before the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran started, the Indian military was probably not concerned about the lack of U.S. participation, “As the It would have been embarrassing for the Indian hosts to have had Pinckney moored alongside IRINS Dena, should war have broken out with Iran during the period of the fleet review.”
After the USS Charlotte sunk the Dena, India allowed Iranian warship IRIS Lavan to dock at the port of Kochi on March 4th with 183-member crew housed at naval facilities. Sri Lanka allowed another Iranian warship IRIS Bushehr to dock at Trincomalee port and housed its 208-member crew at the naval camp on March 5th.
India’s former chief of naval staff, Admiral Arun Prakah commented that
“It’s a bit of treachery of the U.S. to attend a peaceful function side-by-side with Iranian navy, where there’s a lot of camaraderie, and then the moment the Iranian ship pops out of harbour, it’s sunk … They could have delayed this action to spare India this embarrassment.”
That comment and India allowing one Iranian ship to seek safe harbor in an Indian port after the USS Charlotte torpedoed the IRIS Dena is probably the reason why the massive U.S. military unified command “Indo-Pacific Command,” and host of RIMPAC, recently dropped “Indo” from its name and is now called the “Pacific Command,” even though its area of responsibility still includes the Indian subcontinent.
The U.S. Central command said that the U.S. has now sunk/destroyed 60 Iranian naval vessels.
Another Tragedy, Another US Submarine at Pearl Harbor
Those of us who live in Hawaii and those from Japan remember another tragic incident with a U.S. submarine homeported in Pearl Harbor.
On Feb. 9, 2001, the U.S. Navy’s USS Greenville conducted an “emergency” surfacing with 16 VIP civilians onboard as a part of the U.S. Navy’s Distinguished Visitor Embarkation (DVE) program. The USS Greeneville came up under the Japanese student training vessel Ehime Maru, 9 nautical miles off the island of Oahu, breaking the hull of the ship which quickly sunk.
Of the 35 people aboard the Ehime Maru that day 26 were rescued, one with serious injuries. Nine were killed, including four high school students, two teachers, and three crew members, with U.S. Navy and Japanese divers retrieving eight of the nine bodies from the sunken vessel which was raised from the ocean floor during October 2001.
Thankfully, the USS Greeneville is not participating in RIMPAC 2026 and is now homeported in San Diego.
Citizens Protest RIMPAC
(Image via Ann Wright)
Each edition of RIMPAC is protested by citizens in Hawaii. On June 24th a spirited ceremony and procession preceded the protest at the gates of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Numerous persons will be at the gates of Pearl Harbor over the next weeks to continue the challenge to the war practice called RIMPAC.
Impact on Marine Life
Image via Ann Wright
The violent mission of war will include 40 military ships, including 13 from the U.S., 200 aircraft, 25,000 military personnel and five submarines in this year’s RIMPAC, which will include live fire and bombings on the Pohakuloa range on the Big Island of Hawaii. A large retired U.S. Navy ship will be sunk off the island of Kauai, in addition to amphibious landings on the turtle hatching beach of Bellows on the island of Oahu.
Harm to marine mammals created by the large numbers of ships continues to be a major concern. The number of “takes” or deaths of marine mammals allowed by U.S. government permits are horrendous.
Ann Wright served in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves for 29 years and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. She has been with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition since 2010, has been put in Israeli prison twice for attempting to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade on Gaza and has been on segments of flotillas in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2024.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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