The Talisman Sabre 25 multinational exercise kicked off last week with more than 35,000 participants from 19 nations, including the United States and Australia.
During a discussion yesterday with the Defense Writers Group, Army Lt. Gen. Joel B. Vowell, deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, shared his observations about the exercise, which has been held every two years since 2005.
Talisman Sabre has grown significantly since its first iteration, Vowell said. This year, 19 nations participated, with two more observing.
"The growth and attendance of participation is a signal of how important regional stability and security is to everybody," he said.
What started 20 years ago as a U.S.-Australia bilateral effort now includes Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga and the United Kingdom.
Hostile actions and behaviors from China, along with aggregated threats from Russia and North Korea, are driving increased participation in Talisman Sabre, Vowell said.
He added that early in his tenure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined his priorities for the department, which included working closely with allies and partners to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Ensuring interoperability between those nations is a key part of that effort.
At Talisman Sabre, Vowell said, a live-fire demonstration of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System by the U.S., Australia and Singapore exemplified that cooperation.
The U.S. regularly trains with the HIMARS, but Australia and Singapore now own the system as well. This year marked the first time those three nations worked together in a combined battery.
"We had a live-fire event at Shoalwater Bay, where all three countries combined into a composite HIMARS battery, received fire direction — a call for fire ... from an observer for a deep strike target," Vowell said. "You had an integrated fires solution with multiple different platforms from three different countries firing simultaneously on a deep target. That has not happened before. [It's a] big first: Singapore, Australia, U.S., a combined battery HIMARS live fire, with precision, at distances of about 60 kilometers."
Also a first, he said, is the U.S. at Talisman Sabre demonstrating the use of its Typhon Missile system, which is a midrange capability that can fire the Standard Missile-6 or the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.
"We fired SM6 live, first time west of the international date line, from the land and hit a sea target ... at 166 kilometers," Vowell said. "That was emblematic of the requirement the joint forces levied on the Army to be able to have a capability to hold maritime targets at risk from the land."
The Chinese military anti-access, area denial network already has thousands of missiles pointed at Western Pacific targets, Vowell said, noting that the network has not fully accounted for distributed land forces capable of using surface fires to hit land, maritime or air targets.
"That's an asymmetric advantage the Army is developing. We show that in Talisman Sabre," he said.
Deterrence is another key focus of the exercise because it demonstrates the capabilities and interoperability of the United States and its allies, potentially deterring adversaries' undesirable actions.
"Our collective readiness, our signaling of what we're doing forward, provides what has to be inferred and interpreted as a deterrent effect," Vowell said. "The number of participants signals the resolve that we have in the region to work together."
Talisman Sabre is not the only event in which the U.S. participates; Vowell said USARPAC is involved in approximately 45 different exercises.
"Throughout the year, our Army formations move from country to country to country to country to do these events, different parts of the exercises, different training objectives, but they all seek interoperability as an outcome; they all seek a deterrent mechanism," he said.
Interoperability and readiness, he said, mean the United States is ready if called upon to do whatever it's asked to do. But deterrence, he said, aims to prevent conflict from happening in the first place.
"[Talisman Sabre is] part of a connected series to provide a deterrent optic across the region from land forces, so we have no war — priority one," Vowell said. "Priority two, if the national command authority wants us, we are postured and ready to be able to respond in crisis if we have to."