High-End Exercise Valiant Shield 2018

The high-end biennial Valiant Shield exercise kicked off in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands on Sunday, with some of the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ most advanced platforms participating in the weeklong event.

The exercise – a high-end, U.S.-only follow-up to the large-scale multi-national Rim of the Pacific exercise every other year – features more than a dozen ships, 160 aircraft, and 15,000 personnel from all four military branches. This is the seventh iteration of the exercise, which began in 2006.

“We are excited to be here for exercise Valiant Shield as Guam gives us a world-class joint-training opportunity,” exercise director Rear Adm. Daniel Dwyer said in a news release.
“The Marianas Island Range Complex is a premier training environment that allows the joint force a unique opportunity to come together and train side-by-side at the high end.”

To support that high-end warfighting training, the exercise will feature the Marines’ new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter for the first time ever; two P-8A Poseidon maritime multi-mission aircraft squadrons; and guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG-69), the most recent ship to go through a combat system upgrade and be rotated into the forward-deployed naval forces in U.S. 7th Fleet.

https://news.usni.org/2018/09/18/high-end-exercise-valiant-shield-2018-features-f-35bs-12-ships-15000-personnel