As Rim of the Pacific 2022 moves into its next stage, military leaders are looking to the future of the exercise along with how to continue the international relationships built during the world’s largest naval war game.

RIMPAC 2022 is the largest iteration yet of the biennial exercise that began in 1971. Twenty-six nations are participating with 38 ships, four submarines and more than 170 aircraft with about 25,000 troops overall participating on land and at sea. This year has brought in new elements with drones, cyberwarfare, space operations and other elements.

“2024 is expected to be even larger,” said Australian Navy Lt. Cmdr. James Dobson, this year’s coordinator and principal planner.

But some Navy leaders believe that the participating countries need to look beyond the exercise and increase engagement for real-world problems such as natural disasters and other potential crises.

“What I’m learning from RIMPAC is I think we can do more,” said Vice Adm. Michael Boyle, commander of the U.S. Navy’s San Diego-based 3rd Fleet and the officer leading the exercise task force, in a roundtable discussion with reporters Thursday. “Don’t just come together every two years, but find a way to be more frequently together rehearsing as a combined force with a standing kind of RIMPAC organization.”

Last week several RIMPAC participants wrapped up a humanitarian disaster response exercise that included Hawaii hospitals, allowing local emergency response organizations to recertify for disaster response operations, said Dobson. Now the RIMPAC task force is getting ready to play out a conflict scenario around the Hawaiian Islands.

In the fictional scenario the island nation of Griffon has requested help from the international community to protect itself from aggressive incursions by the larger and more powerful island nation of Orion. Several multinational task forces are tackling various missions on land and at sea. The exercise is largely unscripted in hopes that the participants will be more challenged.

“We’ve given them a series of tasks that they’re on standby to complete,” said Dobson.

Dobson said the training agenda was shaped in collaboration with input from all 26 participating nations. Exercises include anti-submarine warfare, escort operations, amphibious landings and interdiction and boarding operations aimed at combating pirates, smugglers and illegal fishing operations.

“Freedom of navigation was something that is very interesting to the United States, but it might not be for every other nation that is participating in RIMPAC,” said Boyle. “Illegal fishing is important for many of the nations; humanitarian assistance and disaster response is important for all of the nations.”

“A bit more work for myself and the planning team,” said Dobson of building the exercise collaboratively rather than planning it top down, but he added that it makes everyone involved more invested. “Everyone is more engaged,” he said.

Traditionally, the Navy hosted and ran much of the exercise, but in 2012 leadership roles began expanding for officers from participating countries. This year foreign officers lead many of the task forces.

“People just keep coming back, and what’s important about that is that we become a global family of navies,” said Boyle. “(So) if you ever need help, you can pick up the phone, and you’ve already established a relationship with people who might be on the other end of the phone to help you, which really, really helps in a crisis.”

This year participants in the exercise were tested with a real-life crisis during training. At 8 a.m. Sunday the maritime operations center of Ford Island received information about an engine room fire aboard the Peruvian navy’s ship GAP Guise. The crew battled the fire for hours, finally extinguishing it at about 1:40 p.m. Helicopters operating out of the ships evacuated two “critically stable” patients with burn injuries to Oahu to undergo treatment.

The Guise was towed into harbor earlier this week and is undergoing repairs.

“Their desire is to get back underway as soon as possible even before RIMPAC is over,” said Boyle. “Obviously, there’ll be some serious assessments to make sure that that ship’s ready to go, and the Peruvian government and navy make those assessments, but we’ll do everything we can to support them.”

In 2014 and 2016 China attended RIMPAC as an invited guest, and Russia attended in 2012. But since then relations between the U.S. and the two nations have soured. Several RIMPAC participants are locked in territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea, resulting in a series of standoffs that has militarized a critical waterway through which more than one-third of all global trade travels.

However, Chinese and Russian ships have been in the vicinity of Hawaii during RIMPAC observing from a distance in international waters with uninvited spy ships. When asked whether he was aware of any activity this year, Boyle said that “historically,” Chinese and Russian spying has been present.

When asked specifically whether there were any current efforts, he said, “I would say historically, meaning every year and including this year.”

But Boyle said that he had “no issues with with navies operating in the Pacific as long as they operate in accordance with international law, which is fine.” It is legal to send surveillance ships into international waters.

Boyle said that Hawaii itself is important not just as a central meeting place for the participating countries, but as a place that can help them bond.

“Some of these sailors, they’ve never left their home nation, and to come to this beautiful place and see what it has to offer from the beaches, the hiking, you know, the Waikiki restaurants and things — it’s just a spectacular opportunity for the sailors,” said Boyle.

RIMPAC planners have stressed efforts to protect the environment in Hawaii. Dobson said the maritime operations center has a desk dedicated to tracking sea life, with ships calling in to report any sightings to be logged and to ensure training stays clear.

However, trust in the Navy has dropped sharply among Hawaii residents after fuel from the Navy’s underground Red Hill storage facility tainted the service’s Oahu water supply, which serves 93,000 people, resulting in many suffering illnesses. The Navy has shut down its Red Hill water shaft and is now relying on its Halawa shaft.

The massive tanks sit above a critical aquifer that provides most of the island’s drinking water, and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply has shut down several of the Navy’s wells to contain them from potential contamination, resulting in a water shortage even as Oahu wrestles with drought.

In March, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the defueling and permanent shutdown of the facility and a move toward a “resilient” fueling plan that would spread fuel to facilities around the region and rely more on tanker ships to keep the fleets fueled.

But state officials recently rejected a proposed Navy plan to defuel the tanks, citing a lack of details and accusing the Navy of lacking urgency. During a visit to Hawaii earlier this week, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told reporters he had no plans to meet with local officials to discuss Red Hill because RIMPAC was his priority.

The Red Hill fuel reserve has played a role in previous RIMPAC exercises, providing as much as 19 millions gallons in 2018, but is not providing fuel for RIMPAC 2022. This year there are more ships than ever and a historically large number of aircraft, which Dobson said has been a logistical challenge. “It’s a big juggling act,” he said.

“We have mitigated some of the restrictions from not using Red Hill by pushing that fuel out to sea,” said Dobson. “That’s challenging, but the silver lining is we’re getting better at doing distributed logistics.”