Vessels from Australia, the USA, the Philippines, and Japan navigate in formation. (AFP Photo)

MSN reports,

The United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines … have announced preparations to perform cooperative naval exercises to preserve freedom of navigation and the rule of law as a display of unity…The combined forces of the participating nations will conduct a series of exercises aimed at improving interoperability and cooperation on April 7 as part of the joint naval and air drills.

Notably, there don’t seem to be any coast guard assets from any nation involved in this exercise.

There has been a lot of speculation about the timing of this exercise being so close to that of the trilateral summit which begins April 11, but the exercise is actually pretty small, with only one ship each from the US, Australia, and Japan. The exercise involves no aircraft carriers, submarines, or amphibious assault ships.

The largest ship participating is the Japanese Destroyer Akebono (DD-108) which is not an Aegis ship, and it is one of their smaller destroyers at 6200 tons full load. The US representative is a Littoral Combat Ship, USS Mobile (LCS-26) at 3,104 tons full load.