Exercise Sea Dragon 22 Puts Indo-Pacific Nations to Test

Exercise Sea Dragon, an annual, US led, multi-national high-end Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) training exercise is now underway at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam with participation from six nations.

US Naval forces are participating in Sea Dragon 2022 along with members of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Indian Navy, Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF), and Republic of Korea Navy (RoKN). Two US Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft from the “Golden Swordsmen” of VP-47 and “The Tridents” of VP-26 are participating in the exercises.

“As [Officer-in-Charge] OIC, I am eager for the opportunity to further develop our partnerships with Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Korea while at Sea Dragon 2022. The continued growth and increasing complexity of this exercise affords an opportunity to practice ASW tactics, techniques, and procedures with allies and partners that we don’t often get a chance to work with,” said Lt. Cmdr. Braz Kennedy, OIC for the US detachment from VP-47.

The exercises are primarily centered around ASW training and will include over 270 hours of in-flight training, including tracking of simulated targets and culminating with the tracking a live US Navy submarine. All exercise events are graded with the ‘Dragon Belt’ award going to the nation scoring the highest total points. The RCAF won the award for Sea Dragon 21.