Major Military Exercises

What it is

Military exercises, also called war games, are structured joint training events in which allied forces practice combined operations without live combat. They build interoperability among militaries that use different equipment and doctrine, signal resolve to adversaries, and field-test command-and-control systems under realistic pressure. The largest exercises integrate multiple domains (sea, air, land, cyber, space) and tens of thousands of personnel across dozens of nations.

The principal organizers in 2026 are the United States, which anchors most Indo-Pacific and NATO drills; NATO as an institution, coordinating Europe's collective defence exercises; and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), which runs exercises primarily to signal intent over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

History

Modern large-scale exercises emerged during the Cold War as a mechanism for NATO and the Warsaw Pact to demonstrate readiness without crossing into conflict. NATO's REFORGER exercises (1969-1993) rehearsed reinforcing West Germany with US divisions airlifted from North America. The US Navy's Rim of the Pacific exercise began in 1971 with four nations; it had expanded to 30 by 2026.

After the Cold War, exercise scale fell sharply as defence budgets contracted across NATO. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea reversed the trend, and NATO enlarged Steadfast Defender and Trident Juncture to Cold War-era scale. China began using large-scale exercises coercively after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, running six named exercises against Taiwan between then and December 2025.

Current state

Exercise tempo across all three axes is at its highest since the Cold War, as of mid-2026.

In the Indo-Pacific, RIMPAC 2026 opens with 31 nations and 25,000 personnel as Pacific security competition intensifies runs June 24 to July 31, 2026, around Hawaii: 30 nations, more than 30,000 personnel, 30-plus surface ships, 5 submarines, and 206 aircraft. AUKUS partners Australia and the UK are integrated at higher capability tiers. In Europe, the NATO 2026 calendar spans Cold Response 26 (March, Norway), Steadfast Deterrence 26 (May, NATO-wide), and BALTOPS 2026 (Baltic Sea). NATO has also stood up three standing enhanced vigilance activities, Baltic Sentry, Eastern Sentry, and Arctic Sentry, which function as a near-permanent exercise posture rather than a fixed calendar event.

In the Western Pacific, China's PLA conducted its sixth large-scale exercise around Taiwan in December 2025 (Justice Mission-2025), deploying Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force troops to rehearse a blockade of key ports. The preceding Strait Thunder-2025A drill in April 2025 deployed 135 aircraft and 38 naval vessels around Taiwan.

Relationships

Exercises are the operational layer sitting atop formal alliances and bilateral defence pacts. RIMPAC operationalises the US-centred Indo-Pacific treaty network, and AUKUS uses it to build the submarine interoperability that Virginia-class transfers will require. NATO treats exercises as the primary instrument of Article 5 credibility, particularly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The island chain base network provides the forward infrastructure that makes US-led exercises in the First Island Chain viable. For China, exercises function as coercive signaling: each named drill (Joint Sword, Strait Thunder, Justice Mission) escalates from the last in declared scope and geographic coverage.

What to watch

• Whether China conducts a seventh large-scale Taiwan exercise in 2026 and which capabilities it signals, particularly hypersonic and carrier-strike components.
• The July 2026 NATO Ankara summit: commitments on readiness targets and burden-sharing may reshape exercise mandates in 2027-2028.
• Autonomous systems integration at RIMPAC and NATO drills, including uncrewed surface vessels and AI-assisted targeting, which is shifting the force-multiplier calculus faster than doctrine has adapted.
• India's expanding exercise calendar with Quad and US partners across the Indian Ocean, as New Delhi develops its own large-format multilateral drill program.