By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
LAEM CHABANG, Thailand — The USS Abraham Lincoln slid into port here Tuesday after 250 days at sea, its flight deck full of F/A-18s and its arrival timed, whether by design or coincidence, to a week when American forces seemed to be everywhere in the Pacific at once.
In Hokkaido, Japan, the 1st Australian Division opened Exercise Yama Sakura 91 on September 2, a trilateral command-post drill pairing roughly 340 Australian troops with 1,400 U.S. Army soldiers, 350 U.S. Marines and 4,000 members of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force. Australian Maj. Gen. Ash Collingburn and U.S. 11th Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. John P. Cogbill met with Japanese counterparts, including Lt. Gen. Kazutomo Idogawa, to plan what organizers describe as large-scale combined operations.
A day earlier, in Kanagawa Prefecture, U.S. Army Japan personnel joined the JGSDF, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and Japanese civilian responders for Big Rescue Kanagawa 2026, a disaster drill large enough to draw Japan's prime minister, who met with U.S. Army Japan commander Maj. Gen. James K. Dooghan.
Further south, about 250 personnel from Pacific Partnership 2026 — the Navy's largest annual humanitarian and disaster-preparedness mission in the region — arrived in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, their fourth stop of the year, bringing medical, engineering and outreach teams ashore. In Brunei, American and Royal Brunei airmen opened a separate bilateral exercise, Pacific Angel 26-1, focused on search-and-rescue cooperation.
None of this is new, exactly — the U.S. and its Pacific partners run this circuit of drills most years. What's notable is the density: five nations, thousands of troops, and one aircraft carrier, all in the same seven-day stretch. Washington frames it as routine deterrence and disaster-readiness; the exercises' hosts, from Tokyo to Bandar Seri Begawan, frame it as insurance. Both things can be true. The bill for that insurance — in fuel, port calls and goodwill — is one the region will keep paying long after the ships sail on.
— Compiled from U.S. Department of Defense (DVIDS) releases and imagery.
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