We have the Fleet Response Training Plan – the FRTP – that lays out those training evolutions and/or exercises that are required for the deploying forces: Carrier Strike Groups; ARG MEUs [Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units]; and independent deployers. There are different requirements for each, but a similar construct. They need to check these blocks in order for us to certify them. And there are a couple of different certifications that they can achieve based on the amount of training that they are afforded. Now in a perfect world, everybody would get the full entitlement of what the FRTP states. Right now we’re operating in an environment that compresses the time we have in which to train. There are lots of variables that enter into that piece of the equation. We are finding that the maintenance required on our ships requires longer periods of time because of the operating tempo that we’ve been under. The demand for our forces has grown. We have an FRTP equation that looks at maintenance, inventory, and training against the global force demand. We have less time, so training is compressed. That has caused us to relook at how we do our training. Can we still provide the same number of days at sea; the same number of flight hours; and the same level of training for the certification, given a compressed training cycle? Here at 3rd Fleet we have preserved the number of steaming days, flight hours, and those things that need to be trained to in order to meet the level needed to achieve certification.

Vice Adm. Gerald R. Beaman, commander, U.S. 3rd Fleet, and Chilean Capt. Luis Sanchez, Sea Combat commander, CTG-170.1, share sea stories while aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) to observe the transfer of biofuel during the Great Green Fleet Demonstration as part of RIMPAC 2012. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Robert Winn

What has changed is the amount of time we have to do all this. Whereas in a traditional FRTP we would find ourselves with three separate synthetic training evolutions, and three separate under way periods, we consolidated into one. It’s called Fleet Synthetic Training – FST. In the traditional FRTP there are three separate evolutions, about a week long, actually a little bit longer. The traditional Fleet Synthetic Training was a five-week model, separated, sometimes, by as much as a month or more between each evolution. We consolidated the Fleet Synthetic Training into one three-week module and accomplished all the same things because there were efficiencies to be had. But we did it based on compressed time. We didn’t have the luxury of doing one separated by three weeks or more, and then hold another one. We did the same thing with the under way period. Whereas in the past you would have a group sail for a couple of weeks and then go back to homeport, and a month – maybe even two months later – you’d get under way for COMPTUEX [Composite Training Unit Exercise], and then you would go back to shore, pierside, and then in some cases it was a matter of days, even a couple of weeks, you would get under way again and do what we call the JTFX – the Joint Training Force Exercise. What we did with the USS Nimitz Strike Group is go from 36 days of underway days that included three-day carrier qualifications for each one of those at-sea periods, to a single 32-day underway period continuous, and accomplished all the same things.

One of your biggest exercises is the 2012 RIMPAC international fleet exercise, which has grown dramatically since my days as a junior officer on a DDG 2-class ship in Pearl Harbor.

RIMPAC has grown exponentially just in the last two years – by over 50 percent. There is an appetite amongst our allies and friends in the Pacific, and those outside the Pacific with a vested interest in what happens in the Pacific, such as Norway, the U.K., and France.

Ships and submarines participating in RIMPAC 2012 sail in formation in the waters around the Hawaiian Islands. Twenty-two nations, more than 40 ships and six submarines, more than 200 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel are participating in the biennial exercise from June 29 to Aug. 3. RIMPAC 2012 was the 23rd exercise in the series, which began in 1971. U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class (EXW) Sebastian McCormack

With 22 nations participating, it becomes sort of a coalition.

There is no single navy in the world that can protect the sea lanes of commerce and communication by themselves, and that includes the U.S. And so the “coalition of the willing,” which is what we’ve thought of as RIMPAC, is really where the future lies. And that applies to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as combat operation.

How do events like this strengthen ties with our partners?

We had three things that we used as our theme for RIMPAC. We wanted to demonstrate to those countries and to the rest of the rim of the Pacific, the non-participating countries, that the U.S. is committed to the region; it afforded those countries that wanted to participate an opportunity to partner with us; and we are the only navy that can offer that type of opportunity for those countries to actually partner up.

The key to international coalitions is interoperability – not just the technical aspect of it, but working together, operating together, and exercising those procedures. By working together in something like RIMPAC, will these nations be more effective when they have to meet up to deal with real contingencies such as major disasters?

Anyone in the Pacific region will tell you, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, the next natural disaster is going to hit. The more that we work with each other now, the more that we can identify each others’ capabilities and limitations. And just to have a face to put with a name is going to make the beginning stages of any natural disaster much easier to deal with on an international scale than if we hadn’t done any of this.