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U.S. Hosts Huge Persian Gulf Wargame; 35 Ships, 41 Countries

: Jun 1, 2013 - : 6:16 am

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Just nine months after hosting the biggest multinational mine-warfare exercises “ever” to be held in and around the Persian Gulf, the Navy’s 5th Fleet and its foreign partners outdid themselves with a second, even larger wargame. More than 20 nations participated in September’s International Mine Counter-Measures Exercise 2012, collaborating against fictional ecoterrorists whose capabilities were suspiciously similar to the real-world arsenal of Iran. This month, 41 nations and some private-sector companies participated in IMCMEX 2013, which despite the name expanded beyond minesweeping to practice protecting civilian oil tankers, oil rigs, ports, and even desalinization plants as well.

With participants from six continents, “the only part of the world that wasn’t represented in this exercise was Antarctica,” boasted Vice Adm. John Miller, the jet fighter pilot who commands both the US 5th Fleet and the multinational Combined Maritime Forces. “It was much more complicated than the exercise we put on back in September.”

In fact, the most important thing to practice wasn’t mine warfare itself, but coordinating a diverse multinational force. Not all 41 nations contributed warships, but there were still 35 vessels from patrol boats to the Navy’s “Afloat Forward Staging Base,” the USS Ponce; some 70 aircraft; some 18 unmanned underwater vehicles for minehunting (i.e. flying and swimming drones); and 6,500 personnel, including 100 divers trained to disarm mines by hand. That’s dozens of different languages, standards of training, and communications technologies, none of them necessarily compatible with one another. So while amateurs may talk strategy and professionals talk logistics, professionals also talk command and control.

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