Seaman Rohan Preston guides an Australian MH-60R Seahawk onto the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold in the South China Sea, Feb. 6, 2025. (Monica Walker/U.S. Navy)
A U.S. warship recently joined its Australian and British counterparts for a two-day exercise in the South China Sea as the U.S. military continues multiple drills across the Indo-Pacific.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold on Feb. 5-6 joined the British offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey and the Australian guided-missile destroyer HMAS Hobart for coordinated maneuvering, tactical data transfers and “a variety of other combined operations,” U.S. 7th Fleet said in a news release Wednesday.
Fleet spokeswoman Lt. j.g. Sarah Merrill, in a Thursday email to Stars and Stripes, declined to provide a more specific location for the exercise.
The exercise was at least the fourth for the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific over the past week, including a major airpower demonstration by stealth fighters on Guam.
Before linking up with the Spey, the Benfold and Hobart trained on Feb. 5 with the Philippine guided-missile frigate BRP Jose Rizal, the Japanese destroyer JS Akizuki and a variety of aircraft near the Philippines, 7th Fleet announced on Feb. 6.
On Saturday, a flotilla of three carriers and eight escort warships from the U.S., France and Japan kicked off Pacific Steller, a 10-day exercise in the East Philippine Sea.
Pacific Steller encompassed “high-level training in all areas of combat,” the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., said Friday in a news release.
“This exercise will strengthen the collective capacity of the three nations to prevent all types of crises, increase their shared capacity to deal with hybrid threats, guaranteeing the preservation of common areas and the promotion of a maritime space based on the rule of law,” the armed forces in French Polynesia said in the release.
France’s only aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered FNS Charles De Gaulle, was leading the exercise. The flotilla includes the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, the Japanese helicopter destroyer JS Kaga and other warships, including destroyers, a cruiser and a supply ship.
Farther east, the U.S., Australian and Japanese air forces are involved in Cope North, an annual exercise at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.
This year’s exercise, which runs Feb. 3-21, includes more than 275 aviators from the participating air forces and the U.S. Marine Corps, according to a Tuesday news release from Australia’s defense department.
Previously a rehearsal for humanitarian aid, Cope North this year centers on air warfare and is the first to include training by F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters from the three nations, the department said.
“This is the first F-35 large force engagement between Australia, Japan and the United States that will exercise all three nations’ fifth [generation] air warfare capabilities and whole-of-force integration in complex yet realistic scenarios,” exercise director Group Capt. Daryl Porter said in the release.
