Several European nations conducted operational deployments to the Western Pacific this year, combining national strategies, international commitments and participation in the biennial Rim of the Pacific 2024 exercise, US Naval Institute News reports.
Meanwhile, Japan experienced the loss of two naval helicopters, a minesweeper and had the chief of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force resign over the service’s mishandling of classified information.
Australia and New Zealand had a mixed year, with their navies deploying, but also sustaining setbacks as maintenance issues grounded Australia’s fleet oilers and New Zealand lost a hydrographic survey ship. Canada and the United Kingdom carried out their own deployment presence commitments to the Western Pacific.
Italy’s deployments to the Western Pacific included the eastward bound June dispatch of the Cavour Carrier Strike Group, which included carrier ITS Cavour (550) and frigate ITS Alpino (F594), to both reach the Italian Navy’s goal of initial operational capability for sea-based expeditionary operations of its F-35B Joint Strike Fighter fleet and have the CSG conduct operational engagements with partner nations and port visits in the region.
Multipurpose combat ship ITS Raimondo Montecuccoli (P432), meanwhile, set out earlier in May on a westward bound voyage, which saw the ship transiting the Panama Canal to participate in RIMPAC 2024 and ballistic missile defense exercise Pacific Dragon 2024. The combat ship then joined the Cavour CSG in Japan in August for exercise Noble Raven 24-3 with the JMSDF, the French Navy, the German Navy and the Royal Australian Navy.
The Cavour CSG and the Abraham Lincoln CSG drilled together twice this year, once in U.S. Central Command and once near Guam. It’s unclear whether Italy will continue consistently deploying assets to the Western Pacific given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in Israel.
The German Navy, meanwhile, carried out a seven-month circumnavigation voyage, with a task group including frigate FGS Baden-Württemberg (F222) and fleet oiler FGS Frankfurt am Main(A1412) setting out in May for Indo-Pacific Deployment 2024. The ships crossed the Atlantic and conducted port visits to Halifax, Canada and New York before transiting the Panama Canal and stopping in San Diego before RIMPAC 2024. The task group then went to Japan and participated in Noble Raven 24-3 and U.N. sanctions patrols of North Korea, capping the deployment off with a port call to Incheon, South Korea.
The two ships then conducted a Taiwan Strait transit. Task force commander Rear Adm. Axel Schulz said that People’s Army Liberation Navy warships shadowed the German ships during the transit.
“They acted in a safe and professional manner, though they let us know that we are not really welcomed,” Schulz said during a news conference in Singapore, where the task group called after pulling into Manila following the Taiwan Strait transit.
In Singapore, USNI News observed German Navy personnel removing recognition charts showing PLAN ships silhouettes that were pasted on the windows facing the bridge wing where watchkeepers are stationed.
“We didn’t see anything that we did not expect and that we were not prepared for,” Chief of the German Navy Vice Adm. Jan Christian Kaack told USNI News at the time.
The German Navy task force also visited Port Klang, Malaysia, and Jakarta, Indonesia in Southeast Asia before heading to Goa, India.
Due to a lack of sufficient capability to deal with the threat of Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles, the German Navy revised its original plans to return through the Red Sea and Suez Canal and instead directed the ships to take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope for the return. The ships docked in Cape Town, South Africa in November and then went to Rota, Spain. Frankfurt Am Main headed home to Wilhelmshaven, Germany while Baden-Württemberg prepared for a deployment to join the naval element of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) mission. The German Navy carried out scheduled crew swaps for both ships to mitigate the effects of a lengthy deployment.
Future German Navy deployments to the region would depend on the situation at hand, Kaack to USNI News, adding that the German Armed Forces would continue to deploy forces from any or all of the three services each year to the Indo-Pacific to adhere to the German government’s push for a stronger military presence in the Indo-Pacific.
China has generally denounced the presence of European and other U.S. partner nation ships in the Indo-Pacific and their activities, particularly when they conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, transits through the Taiwan Strait, participate in joint activities supporting the Philippines or sanctions missions monitoring North Korea.
During an embark on Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Montreal (FFH336) in the South China Sea, USNI News observed multiple PLAN ships shadowing the RCN ship, but no untoward incident.
The commander of the Cavour CSG, Rear Adm. Giancarlo Ciappina, in a media session in Singapore said the CSG had encountered PLAN ships during the deployment, but nothing out of the ordinary occurred. But in June, the Netherlands Defense Ministry said a Chinese fighter aircraft and helicopter harassed frigate HNLMS Tromp (F803) while the ship conducted a North Korea sanctions monitoring patrol.
Beijing sees the North Korean sanctions monitoring patrols, conducted by a number of ships and aircraft, as a cover for surveillance operations on China, with the Chinese military often harassing the ships and aircraft carrying out the mission. Both the Netherlands and Australia reported harassment on the mission, with Chinese fighter aircraft dropping flares in front of an RAN MH-60R helicopter operating from destroyer HMAS Hobart (DDG39) in the Yellow Sea in May.
This year there were an increased number of monitoring missions because of a more extensive presence of international ships deployed to the Indo-Pacific region. Along with Tromp and Hobart, ships carrying out individual patrols for the mission included French Navy frigate FS Prairial (F731), Raimondo Montecuccoli, Baden-Württemberg and Frankfurt am Main, RAN destroyer HMAS Sydney(DDG42), RCN frigates Montreal, HMCS Vancouver (FFH331) and HMCS Ottawa (FFH341), Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) fleet oiler HMNZS Aotearoa (A11) and Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey (P234). Australian, Canadian, French and New Zealand aircraft also carried out maritime air surveillance patrols.
Tromp deployed in March, participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea before continuing on to the Indo-Pacific to carry out the Pacific Archer deployment, which included drills with the U.S in the South China Sea and with a JMSDF destroyer in the East China Sea while sailing to Hawaii for RIMPAC and Pacific Dragon. Following Pacific Dragon, the frigate transited the Panama Canal, made a port call in Curacao and returned to the Netherlands in September, completing a circumnavigation voyage.
French Navy frigate FS Bretagne (D655) conducted a seven-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific, setting out in April and returning home in October. Bretagne’s deployment included a mix of national tasking, port visits and bilateral drills with French partners in the region and international engagements like the Balikatan exercise in the Philippines, Valiant Shield 2024 and RIMPAC. France will conduct a bigger deployment to the Indo-Pacific in 2025, with the Charles De Gaulle CSG having set out at the end of November.
The United Kingdom is readying the U.K. CSG led by carrier HMS Prince of Wales (R09) for a 2025 Indo-Pacific deployment, marking a return of a U.K. carrier to the region after a three-year absence. This year, the forward-deployed OPVs Spey and HMS Tamar (P233) conducted a variety of engagements in the region, while the U.K. Littoral Mission Group South amphibious task groupdeployed to Australia in July to conduct drills there.
Meanwhile, Canada deployed three frigates to the Indo-Pacific, which is in line with its 2022 announcement that it would increase to a three-frigate presence in the region from the previous two frigates.
The RCN has 12 frigates in its fleet, with five on the West Coast and seven on the East Coast. Vancouver participated in RIMPAC 2024 during its deployment. Both Montreal and Vancouver have completed their deployments, while Ottawa is currently deployed around Northeast Asia, having completed a North Korea sanctions monitoring mission.
The JMSDF had a mixed year. It successfully carried out its annual Indo-Pacific deployment, participated in RIMPAC and Pacific Dragon and performed a number of multinational drills supporting the Philippines and trilateral drills with the U.S. and South Korea. The Japanese Navy also began Tomahawk cruise missile training and successfully deployed destroyer carrier JS Kaga (DDH-184) to the U.S. West Coast to carry out F-35B trials. But the JMSDF lost two SH-60K helicopters in a mid-air collision on April 20 while conducting anti-submarine warfare training at night. A JMSDF board of inquiry concluded that inadequate watchkeeping by the crews of both helicopters, a lack of proper communication between the overall surface group commander and the commanding officer of a destroyer controlling one of the helicopters and a failure to set altitude separation were contributing factors to the collision.
Then, on July 12, JMSDF chief Adm. Ryo Sakai announced his intention to resign, taking personal responsibility for the mishandling of classified information and fraudulent allowance claims by JMSDF personnel. In September, then-Japan Defense Minister Minoru Kihara confirmed that the commanding officer of destroyer JS Suzutsuki (DD-117) had been reassigned following a July 4 incident in which the destroyer sailed into Chinese waters within 12 nautical miles of the coast of Zhejiang Province while surveilling an ongoing PLAN exercise. In November, the JMSDF lost minesweeper JS Ukushima (MSC-686) following a ship fire.
South Korea carried out a series of trilateral drills with the U.S. and Japan over the year, in addition to a number of bilateral drills with the U.S. such as Exercise Ssang Yong 24. It’s unclear how South Korea’s political situation, with the ruling government in turmoil over the recent attempt to impose martial law, will affect defense and security cooperation between the three countries.
The RAN successfully fired the Naval Strike Missile at RIMPAC, an SM-6 missile during Pacific Dragon and a Tomahawk cruise missile off the U.S. West Coast as part of its efforts to improve the fleet’s long-range fires capabilities. The RAN also successfully hosted its multinational exercise Kakadu in September and carried out a significant number of engagements and activities, including the inaugural Australian-Indonesian Keris Woomera amphibious exercise. However, the RAN’s Supply-class fleet oilers experienced mechanical defects, putting both ships out of service.
In the absence of the RAN’s fleet oilers, the RNZN’s Aotearoa and German Navy’s Frankfurt am Mainhave helped alleviate the lack of an RAN fleet oiler deployed in the Indo-Pacific. U.S. and partner nations over the past few years have been operating an allied fleet oiler replenishment system.
“Aotearoa continued its support of partner navies during its passage south to Singapore,” the New Zealand Defense Force said in a release about the ship’s deployment. “It conducted replenishments and manoeuvres with South Korea, Japan, Germany, Australia, the Philippines and the United States, including taking part in a Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity international exercise in the South China Sea, designed to strengthen interoperability in the maritime context. It included a concurrent replenishments with returning customer USS Boxer and USS Comstock, and with destroyers USS Howard and HMAS Sydney.”
The RNZN fleet oiler participated in RIMPAC, conducted a North Korean sanctions monitoring patrol and on Sept. 25, along with RAN destroyer Sydney, conducted a Taiwan Strait transit.
In October, the RNZN lost hydrographic dive and survey ship HMNZS Manawanui (A09), with the shipsinking after running aground in Samoa. An RNZN board of inquiry found that crew failures led to the accident.
