REPORT: RIMPAC 2026 and the Liaoning — Two Armadas Face Off in the Pacific

The RIMPAC exercise opens in Hawaii

On June 24, 2026, the RIMPAC exercise — Rim of the Pacific — officially began in Hawaii. Forty surface ships, five submarines, one hundred and forty aircraft, and more than 25,000 military personnel from 31 nations had gathered for the world's largest naval exercise. In parallel, on June 22, the Valiant Shield 2026 exercise launched its operations from Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Japan. Two simultaneous exercises, one message: the Western Pacific is not an empty space for China to fill at will.

That same June 22, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy announced that the carrier strike group of the aircraft carrier Liaoning had returned to its home port of Qingdao, after more than 40 days of high-seas training — a deployment described by analysts as the longest ever conducted by the vessel since it entered service. The Chinese carrier had traversed the South China Sea, the Western Pacific, and several strategic maritime corridors. Its official mission: combat training. Its real mission: mapping the weaknesses of the maritime space that Western allies were about to exercise in.

Two allied exercises beginning just as the Liaoning heads home. That timing is not accidental. In the Pacific, every naval movement is also a political message, and everyone reads the messages.

The world's largest naval exercise, since 1971

RIMPAC has been held since 1971, every two years, under American command. It is the only naval exercise that regularly brings together navies as diverse as those of the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, India, and roughly thirty other nations. The 2026 edition runs through July 31. Its agenda includes surface warfare, submarine warfare, anti-submarine warfare, amphibious exercises, and missile defence simulations. In practice, it is a full-scale test of coalition naval capabilities against a high-intensity threat.

Chinese observers at the sidelines

China has not been invited to RIMPAC since 2018, when it deployed spy ships to observe the exercises it was officially participating in. That exclusion has not stopped Beijing from sending observers. This year, the Chinese navy's electronic surveillance vessel Kaiyangxing had transited the Osumi Strait to enter the Pacific Ocean before the exercises began. Its mission: collecting training data from allied forces — electronic signatures, communication frequencies, tactical patterns. This kind of collection is legal on the high seas, but it perfectly illustrates the tension between the rhetoric of openness and the actual practice of Sino-American military relations.

Being excluded from the exercise but sending a spy ship to watch it — that is the exact definition of Chinese military diplomacy. Beijing monitors what it cannot join, and learns from what it claims to ignore.

A carrier strike group tested across every strategic route

The Liaoning's carrier strike group had left its home port for an exceptional deployment. On April 20, 2026, it had transited the Taiwan Strait heading toward the South China Sea. By May 19, 2026, it was operating in the waters of the Western Pacific. Over 40 days, the group conducted far-seas training exercises including: early warning and reconnaissance, joint force "system-of-systems" sea confrontations, tactical carrier-based aircraft operations, air superiority and anti-aircraft defence, maritime strike operations, amphibious support, and the use of live ammunition. It is a training agenda that covers every scenario in modern naval warfare.

The Liaoning's documented limitations

Analyst Shen Ming-shih, cited in the ThinkChina analysis, put this deployment in perspective: the Liaoning is now capable of operating beyond the first island chain, but it is unlikely to sustain operations beyond the second island chain for extended periods. The reason: at-sea replenishment limitations and the absence of Chinese overseas military bases comparable to American logistical capabilities. The future aircraft carrier Fujian, of more advanced design, could shift that balance when it enters operational service. For now, China's projected naval power remains geographically constrained.

The Liaoning sailed thousands of kilometres. Impressive. But the gap between "capable of sailing far" and "capable of fighting far" remains immense. Analysts know it. Beijing knows it too.

A second-island-chain exercise

While RIMPAC was opening in Hawaii, Valiant Shield 2026 was beginning from Guam on June 22. It is a bilateral US–Japan exercise covering the Mariana Islands Range Complex, the waters around the Northern Marianas, and Japan. Its geography is precise: it operates exactly in the zone that China considers its natural expansion space between the first and second island chains. The simultaneous timing of Valiant Shield and RIMPAC creates pressure on two fronts of the Western Pacific — one from Hawaii, the other from Guam.

The DF-17 missile and the flexing of nuclear muscle

This context grew sharper on June 20, 2026, when CCTV Military Time — China's official military channel — aired footage of two realistic combat exercises involving the PLA Rocket Forces. Among the equipment shown: a DF-17 missile launcher pulling over at the side of a road, erecting, and launching the missile vertically. The DF-17 is a precision-guided hypersonic ballistic missile capable of targeting aircraft carriers. Airing that footage two days before RIMPAC opened was not a scheduling accident — it was a deliberate strategic message.

Showing the DF-17 two days before RIMPAC is telling allies: "We know you're training to project power; here is what can sink your carriers." That is coercive diplomacy made visible.

A shift from simple confrontation to "systems of systems"

The ThinkChina analysis published on June 25, 2026 offers a reading of this moment that goes beyond a simple ship count: what is playing out in the Western Pacific is a shift from a confrontation between carrier versus carrier to a confrontation between integrated military systems. The United States and its allies are testing in RIMPAC integrated anti-submarine warfare, networked encrypted communications, coordinated long-range strike, and electronic warfare. On the other side, China is developing an anti-access and area-denial doctrine — the well-known A2/AD — combined with hypersonic missile saturation capabilities and a permanent maritime surveillance network.

What RIMPAC proves and what it cannot prove

Analyst Shen Ming-shih draws an important limit: RIMPAC is a large-scale routine exercise, and the United States will avoid framing it as specifically targeting China. That rhetorical caution has a practical reason: participating nations include countries that trade heavily with Beijing and would not accept an explicitly anti-China framing. But the real operational objective deceives no one: testing allied interoperability in a high-intensity conflict scenario in the Indo-Pacific — meaning a scenario where China is the implicit adversary.

Saying RIMPAC is not aimed at China is a verbal diplomacy exercise that everyone practices and no one believes. The real language here is that of ships, missiles, and exercise zones.

Real-time intelligence collection

The presence of the Kaiyangxing in the Pacific before RIMPAC is a reminder that China does not watch allied exercises passively. It analyses them actively. Data collected on the high seas by electronic surveillance vessels is legal, but its operational value is concrete: identifying the command frequencies used by each allied navy, the formation patterns of combat groups, vulnerabilities in the chain of command, the acoustic signatures of participating submarines. It is low-noise intelligence work with high strategic value.

The A2/AD doctrine refined through observation

Every RIMPAC enriches the PLA's operational library. What China observes in these exercises feeds directly into the development of its anti-access and area-denial doctrine. The DF-17 and DF-21D hypersonic missiles were designed precisely to counter American carrier strike groups in motion. The more China observes how those groups operate, the more it can refine its targeting parameters. The paradox is real: the exercises that demonstrate allied strength also feed the countermeasures China is developing against that same strength.

The adversary observes, learns, adapts. That is true for China facing RIMPAC. It is also true for Russia facing Ukraine. The shared lesson: open training is a gift to enemy intelligence. The question is whether visible deterrence is worth that cost.

Taiwan in the background of every manoeuvre

RIMPAC 2026 takes place in a particularly charged regional context. The Liaoning's transit through the Taiwan Strait on April 20, 2026 was a direct signal to Taipei and Washington. China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province and has stated repeatedly since 2021 that it will not rule out reunification by force if necessary. RIMPAC includes amphibious exercises that, without explicitly targeting a Taiwan scenario, test precisely the capabilities needed to defend an island against an amphibious assault — or to project relief forces into one.

North Korea as a stability multiplier

North Korea complicates the regional strategic picture. Pyongyang has accelerated its nuclear programme, with Kim Jong-un visiting a new production facility for weapons-grade nuclear material in early June 2026. North Korea's Rocket Forces have also benefited, according to Ukrainian intelligence, from Russian technological improvements to their KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles, reducing their margin of error from several kilometres to a few metres. That improved precision is directly relevant to North Korea's capability to target South Korean or Japanese military bases — some of which host the very forces present at RIMPAC.

North Korea, China, Russia. Three authoritarian powers sharing a common logic: drive up the cost of Western security until the West lets go. RIMPAC, in its way, is the collective answer those three capitals are watching closely.

A military competition that takes no breaks

The Western Pacific in the summer of 2026 is not at war. But it is in permanent, constant, multi-layered competition. RIMPAC demonstrates allied cohesion. The Liaoning demonstrates China's maritime ambition. Valiant Shield tests US–Japan bilateral defence. The Kaiyangxing collects data on everyone. And somewhere in Beijing, generals are analysing the results of 40 days at sea and planning the next deployment. Military competition in the Pacific is not a one-off crisis — it is the permanent structure of the balance of power in the region.

What democracies must sustain

For democracies, the lesson of summer 2026 is clear: sustained military presence in the Pacific is not optional. 31 nations at RIMPAC means 31 governments that decided the defence of the international order in the Indo-Pacific was worth their investment. China is counting on fatigue, on cost, on the internal tensions of allies to erode that coalition over time. RIMPAC is, among other things, the annual demonstration that this erosion has not occurred — not yet. What Zelensky says about aid to Ukraine, admirals apply in the Pacific: credibility is measured by presence, not by statements.

RIMPAC will not stop the Liaoning or the DF-17. But it tells the world that the United States and its allies are there, that they train together, and that they are not leaving. Sometimes that is all a show of force needs to accomplish.

The pace of Sino-American rivalry accelerates

On June 24, 2026, when the first RIMPAC ships left their berths for the waters off Hawaii, the world was watching a Pacific in transformation. No shots fired, no direct confrontation, but an accumulation of signals — exercises, deployments, missiles on display, spy ships — tracing the military geography of the coming decade. China is testing its limits. The allies are testing their cohesion. And somewhere between the two, the international order that democracies have built since 1945 is straining to hold.

What RIMPAC says about the West's capacity to hold

The 31 nations present at RIMPAC 2026 represent a collective response to Chinese military pressure in the Pacific. It is not a perfect response — interests diverge, budgets are under strain, political cohesion fluctuates. But it is a real response, with 40 ships, 5 submarines, 140 aircraft, and 25,000 military personnel training together. Against a Liaoning that has demonstrated its ability to operate far from its bases, and against Chinese Rocket Forces displaying hypersonic missiles, the allied response holds. For now.

For now. Those two words say everything. Neither China nor the democracies have reached their full potential in this standoff. The Pacific of 2030 will depend on who has made better use of the current decade.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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