The AnnualEx 2021 exercise took place November 21-30 in the Philippine Sea off the southern coast of Japan. It involved naval forces from five countries:
Royal Australian Navy (RAN)
Royal Canadian Navy (RCN)
German Navy (GMN)
Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF)
U.S. Navy (US)
Five countries! And in the Pacific theater where our pacing threat, China, is? It sounds like a major exercise with several dozen ships involved, surely! Given the location, perhaps it is an exercise focused on high level combat with China along the lines of the pre-WWII Fleet Problems? One might reasonably assume three dozen or more ships from the US Navy, alone. Let’s take a look at this mammoth exercise.
Public relations photos indicate that the exercise consisted of 17 ships, in total, six from the US Navy. Uh oh. This doesn’t sound as mammoth as I envisioned. Well, if not big it should at least be focused on China and high level warfare, right?
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| AnnualEx 2021 Group PR Photo |
As best I can ascertain, here is the list of participating ships:
US
USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70)
USS Lake Champlain (CG 57)
USS Stockdale (DDG 106)
USNS Rappahannock (T-AO 204)
USNS John Ericsson (T-AO 194)
Los Angeles class submarine
Canada
HMCS Winnipeg
Japan
JS Teruzuki (DD 116)
JS Kirishima (DDG 174)
JS Yamagiri (DD 152)
JS Asahi (DD 119)
JS Onami (DD 111)
JS Izumo (DDH 183)
JS Inazuma (DD 105)
JS Harusame (DD 102)
JS Chokai (DDG 176)
Soryu class submarine
Australia
HMAS Brisbane (D 41)
HMAS Warramunga (FFH 152)
Germany
FGS Bayern
There appear to have been some Japanese ships that participated only briefly which may change the apparent numbers.
Various reports list the following training events during the exercise:
- maritime communication tactics
- anti-submarine warfare operations
- air warfare operations
- replenishments-at-sea
- cross-deck flight operations
- maritime interdiction maneuvers
- enhanced planning
- live-fire gunnery events
- combined information warfare
As usual, the US Navy contributed its bit of buzzword bingo.
“The U.S. Navy is honored to be invited to participate once again,” said Rear Adm. Dan Martin, commander, Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 1. “ANNUALEX presents an opportunity to strategically coordinate, collaborate and further strengthen our network of partnerships and alliances, enabling us to remain a flexible, adaptable and persistent combined force capable of quickly projecting power, where and when needed.” [1]
So, the exercise lasted 10 days. Day one and day ten were meetings, photo ops, and self-congratulatory press exercises. So, that leaves around 8 days of actual exercises … at best. We noted a list of 9 supposed training events. Doing the arithmetic, that’s just more than one event per day. Is that really effective training? How much can you learn in one day when 17 ships have to cycle through the day’s event? A bit more arithmetic shows that 17 ships would get an average of 1.4 hrs per training event. Can you learn to be a professional baseball player in one day or one hour? Can you learn to be an anti-submarine warfare expert in one day? Can you become an air warfare expert in 1.4 hrs? There were 15 ships and two submarines, as best I can tell. Again, do the math. That’s 7 ships per submarine. If each ship had a turn at a one-on-one event with a sub, that’s an average of 3 hrs ASW training per ship. Can you really learn anything about ASW in 3 hrs? In any kind of realistic exercise you’d be phenomenally lucky to even detect a sub in 3 hrs. ASW is a long game, played out over many, many hours or days for a single encounter.
Of course, all this assumes 24 hour, non-stop exercising. Far more likely is that the events were limited to daytime for safety’s sake so that means even less time per event.
Sure, some of these events may have occurred in parallel. ‘Maritime communications tactics’, whatever that is, could possibly be done while something else was going on. That does not, however, change the fact that no useful training could have possibly occurred in the time allotted.
What did we – the US military/Navy – accomplish by this exercise? Did we actually learn anything or was this just an excuse for a multi-naval, international group hug?
Best case … even if the exercise was wildly successful and worthwhile … it involved three US Navy warships and a sub. Three warships and a sub that was presumably there just to be a ‘target’. Three out of a US Navy fleet of 285 ships gained something. How is that making the fleet more combat ready?
We say we’re pivoting away from anti-terrorism and nation building to peer competition and yet we can’t seem to let go of these useless, low end, group hug exercises. Where are the massive, high end, combat exercises that last for weeks … you know, like a real war operation would?
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