US military exercises in Asia are getting bigger and more complex amid rising tension with China

The US and its allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific have been conducting larger and more complex military exercises in recent years, a development that comes amid rising tensions between China and its neighbors.

Large exercises with multiple countries and thousands of troops are nothing new in the region, but in recent years many such exercises have expanded not only in size but in scope, adding new participants as well as training in new domains and at higher levels of integration.

Some of the growth is due to a post-pandemic rebound in activity, and some countries want more training for non-military challenges, such humanitarian assistance and disaster response, but US officials also point to growing concerns about China as the driving factor behind the shift.

Exercise Super Garuda Shield in August 2022 was an early sign of the trend. Previously a bilateral US-Indonesian exercise, the 2022 version expanded to include some 4,000 personnel from 14 countries attending either as participants or observers, among other firsts. The 2023 edition grew further, with more than 5,000 troops and 19 countries.

Last year, the US-Australian biennial exercise Talisman Sabre was the largest on record, with more than 34,000 troops from 13 countries operating across the exercise’s “largest-ever geographical footprint." Talisman Sabre 2023 was also notable in that other service branches were “bolting on” to the exercise, according to Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of I Corps, the US Army's operational headquarters for the Indo-Pacific theater.

“We had six discrete operations” during the exercise, Brunson told reporters at a conference in October. “We had an amphibious operation. We had the Marines show up for this. This is now a joint exercise. We had the Air Force doing things in the exercise. A paradrop scheduled for the operation. We had naval activities going on.”

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who led US Pacific Air Forces until February, said in September that during US Air Force multinational exercises in the past, “sometimes the level of complexity is reduced so that everybody can participate.”

"We're not doing that anymore,” Wilsbach added, citing several exercises held last year as examples, including Pitch Black, which included a "super complex” drill that involved 20 countries training to take down a “high-end” surface-to-air missile system at night.

The trend has continued this year. In February, Australia joined the exercise Keen Edge for the first time, expanding what had been a bilateral US-Japan exercise since it began in 1985 and illustrating the “synchronization” of those three militaries, according to US Navy Adm. John Aquilino, who oversees US military activity in the region as head of US Indo-Pacific Command.

“It was an incredible event. It pulled together those three nations in a way that we haven't seen in a long time,” Aquilino said at a think-tank event this month.

A few weeks after Keen Edge, the 43rd iteration of the exercise Cobra Gold kicked off in Thailand. Begun as a bilateral US-Thai exercise in the early 1980s, Cobra Gold has grown in size and scope over the years. This year had some 9,000 troops from 30 countries participating or observing.

Cobra Gold was already the largest defense exercise in Asia, but officials at this year’s edition emphasized its recent expansion, with participants working together at different operational levels and in new ways, including through a Common Operating Picture, deployed for the first time this year.

While past Cobra Golds were mainly about tactical-level training, this year incorporated more exercises focused on enabling countries to coordinate at higher levels of command, said Gen. Matthew McFarlane, deputy commanding general of I Corps.

“This year we just finished a multinational forces headquarters command-post exercise with almost 30 different countries involved, and about nine countries significantly participating,” in which they worked on "aspects of combined joint all-domain operations, specifically cyber and space,” McFarland told reporters on March 7.

McFarland said some of Cobra Gold’s longstanding tactical drills were also adjusted to add complexity. Among the additions were rapid-insertion training with a HIMARS launcher alongside other artillery and a live-fire artillery drill held in the drop zone after a parachute jump. US and Thai soldiers also conducted jungle training (another area of growing focus) at night rather than in the daytime as in the past, McFarland said.

“This thing continues to expand in scope and scale as we address participating nations' desires to conduct multinational, multilateral training,” McFarland said.

The US-Philippine-led exercise Balikatan, which kicked off this week, is on the same trajectory. More than 16,000 troops are participating this year, which is slightly less than last year’s record-setting total, but there are several other major firsts, including the French navy’s participation, maritime exercises conducted beyond the 12-mile limit of Philippine territorial waters, and the inclusion of the Philippine coast guard, which has clashed with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea several times in recent months.

“Each year, we work closely with [Philippine military] senior leaders to make Balikatan more challenging. This year, we’ve increased the scope, scale, and complexity across all domains,” Lt. Gen. William Jurney, commander of US Marine Corps Forces in the Pacific, said this month.

“We’re building military readiness across the full range of combined and joint operations. It’s our most expansive Balikatan yet,” said Jurney, the US officer responsible for planning and conducting the exercise.

‘They are feeling the heat’

The trend toward larger, more complex exercises is a reflection of the Biden administration’s security policy, which is focused on developing “integrated deterrence” by improving US military capabilities and working more closely with allies and partners.

The administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, published in February 2022, listed “bolster Indo-Pacific security” as one of five objectives and said it was pursuing it by “increasing the scope and complexity of our joint exercises and operations,” among other initiatives.

Expanding exercises and other operations is also a longstanding goal of the region’s chiefs of defense, who meet in-person once a year to set their priorities, Aquilino said at another think tank event this month.

At those meetings, “we agree to come out with three things that we’re all going to work on,” Aquilino said. “And the one thing that has been consistent for three years is this: that we will continue to work more mini- and multilaterally together and expand our operations.”

“So almost every exercise we do, and we do 120 of them in a year, has been expanded to more multilateral, more joint, more combined sets of operations,” Aquilino added. “Whether it’s Balikatan with the Philippines, Talisman Sabre with the Australians, Cobra Gold with the Thais, Garuda Shield with the Indonesians, RIMPAC in the United States, all of these have been expanded and broadened — more complex, less scripted, and real training for our militaries to be able to come together at any time.”

Aquilino said “like-minded” countries were pulling together because of shared values — “freedom of navigation, human rights, peaceful interaction, and the peaceful resolution of disputes” — and some militaries in the region see training with the US and its allies as the best way to learn new skills. While US officials and their foreign counterparts often say the exercises are not directed at any one country, Aquilino and others point to China’s behavior as the main reason so many countries want to train together.

“When you see an increase in multilateral and multinational training going on, that's because the partners are asking for it,” Gen. Charles Flynn, the commander of the US Army in the Pacific, said at the conference in October.

“And they're asking for it for two reasons: One, they see the value of interoperability with US and other partner forces in the region,” Flynn said. “The second reason they're asking for it is they do not appreciate the irresponsible and insidious behavior of the Chinese in the region.”

China frequently criticizes US military activity, especially in the Western Pacific, where it has territorial disputes with many of its neighbors. Beijing also accuses US allies of acting at Washington’s behest and says US military exercises are creating unrest and stoking divisions. A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman said this month that a “certain non-regional country" was trying to “gather its allies to build up ‘small cliques’ against China."

There is concern in the region about the increasing military activity, including in the Philippines and Japan, where local leaders have expressed fears about being caught in the crossfire. But Tokyo, Manila, and other governments have embraced the US approach in response to what they see as threats from China amid a worsening security environment.

“My experience as a commander in the Fleet Marine Force for the last three and a half years in the Western Pacific is our allies and partners are all in,” Lt. Gen. James Bierman, who led Japan-based Marines from November 2021 until January 2024, said at a conference this month.

“They are feeling the heat. They're tired of getting pushed around in their own backyards,” Bierman added. "We are doing things in terms of access, in terms of bilateral, trilateral, multilateral exercises, we are doing things we couldn't have imagined doing just a short time ago, just several years ago.”

Bierman echoed Flynn and other US commanders, pointing to those exercises and the relationships they foster as an important counter to threats from rivals.

“Nothing sends a message of deterrence and unsettles our adversaries like true interoperability, like direct evidence of the US joint force operating closely side-by-side, grinding and developing interoperability and capabilities with allies and partners,” Bierman said.