US Air Force announces new exercise in the Pacific to test its combat capabilities against China

The US Air Force will send units from all over the US to the Pacific next summer. The aim of the exercise is to test the planned troop distribution in the event of a possible conflict with China.

“We call our summer exercise [20]25 REFORPAC, which is a return to the Pacific on a larger scale. We're integrating it into INDOPACOM's campaign plans and our Pacific Air Force approach to supporting them, and we're integrating it into the combatant commander role, but we're doing it in a more robust way,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin.

The 14-day exercise will bring together forces from Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the continental United States to practice operating in a complex environment while supporting long-distance operations, Allvin said Friday during a Hudson Institute event.

The exercise is reminiscent of the “Return of Forces to Germany” (REFORGER) exercises conducted by the USA and NATO during the Cold War. At that time, the USA practiced moving large contingents of troops across the Atlantic and using prepared weapons to defend West Germany.

After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. need for such exercises diminished and the Air Force shifted its focus to sending troops, one squadron at a time, to support operations in the Middle East. But the Air Force is moving away from that model to “reoptimize” for great power competition and will restructure its squadrons to train and deploy together.

The reorganization is intended to address what Allvin describes as a “fragmented” Air Force that handles its missions through crowdsourcing – a method that is not sufficient, however, when the Air Force becomes embroiled in a highly dramatic battle in the Pacific.

“Until you get there and do it over a longer period of time, you're not really going to uncover the flaws that you might not have discovered if you did it piecemeal. You have to do it in a realistic scenario, and that's going to happen next summer,” Allvin said.

REFORPAC will be integrated into a large-scale exercise in the Pacific that the US is conducting jointly with Australia, called Talisman Sabre, because the US knows it has to fight alongside its allies and partners, he said.

The new delivery model is one of many changes the service is introducing as part of its new reoptimization plan. Six months into the effort, Allvin said he was “surprised” at how quickly the service is moving forward on the agenda, but he's ready to go even faster.