Two decommissioned U.S. warships with decades of combat history, including post-9/11 deployments and Tomahawk strikes during Desert Storm, are headed to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The USS Peleliu and USS Mobile Bay are scheduled to be sunk as target practice during the Rim of the Pacific exercise now underway off Hawaii, Military Times reported.
The San Diego Union-Tribune first confirmed the planned sinkings. The Navy, for its part, declined to verify the information when Military Times sought confirmation, offering no explanation for the silence.
The planned sinking exercise, known as a SINKEX event, will mark the third time in recent weeks that a retired American warship has been sent to the ocean floor during live-fire drills. The USS Juneau was sunk during the Valiant Shield exercise off the Mariana Islands Range Complex between June 22 and July 1. That a Japanese torpedo delivered the final blow to the Juneau, a story covered here previously, underscored the multinational character of these exercises and the trust embedded in allied partnerships.
RIMPAC 2026 kicked off June 24 and runs through July 31. The exercise involves roughly 40 surface ships, five submarines, 140 aircraft, and more than 25,000 personnel. The Defense Department describes RIMPAC's scope as covering amphibious operations, gunnery and missile proficiency, anti-submarine warfare, air defense, military medicine, humanitarian assistance, counter-piracy, mine clearance, explosive ordnance disposal, and diving and salvage operations.
The exercise has been held biennially since 1971. But the ships headed for the seafloor this time carry histories that deserve more than a passing mention before they become artificial reefs.
A ship that carried Marines to war after 9/11
The USS Peleliu, an amphibious assault ship, was commissioned in May 1980 and served for roughly 35 years before being decommissioned in March 2015. Over that span, the ship steamed more than one million miles.
Its most consequential chapter came in the weeks after September 11, 2001. The Peleliu carried the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Afghanistan under the command of then-Brigadier General James Mattis as part of Task Force 58. That deployment put Marines ashore in a landlocked country hundreds of miles from the sea, a feat of expeditionary reach that became one of the defining early operations of the war on terror.
In November 2001, Task Force 58 captured John Walker Lindh, the American citizen who later confessed aboard the Peleliu to being a member of Al-Qaeda. The case became a national flashpoint over treason, loyalty, and the legal boundaries of wartime detention.
The Navy has faced its share of difficult moments in recent years, from a fire aboard the USS Indianapolis that injured seven sailors to training incidents that cost lives. Those episodes make the service records of ships like the Peleliu all the more worth remembering.
Mobile Bay: from Tomahawk strikes to Beirut
The USS Mobile Bay, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, was commissioned in February 1987 and served 36 years. Her combat record reads like a compressed history of American power projection in the post-Cold War era.
During Operation Desert Storm, the Mobile Bay launched 22 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. She fired TLAMs again in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Between those two wars, in 1989, the cruiser participated in the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, a mission that put the ship at the intersection of diplomacy and force in one of the most volatile regions on earth.
The ship's name carries its own weight. USS Mobile Bay was named for the August 1864 Civil War battle in which Union Admiral David Farragut, apocryphally credited with shouting "D*** the torpedoes, full speed ahead!", clashed with Confederate forces under Admiral Franklin Buchanan. Whether or not Farragut actually uttered those words, the phrase became shorthand for American audacity under fire.
That a ship bearing that name will now serve as a target feels like a fitting, if sobering, final act. These vessels don't get museum berths or memorial status. They get ordnance.
Why SINKEX matters for readiness
Sinking exercises are not ceremonial. They give allied navies the chance to fire live weapons at full-scale surface targets under realistic conditions, something no simulator or drone target can replicate. The size, radar signature, and structural composition of a retired warship provide data that matters when the next real engagement comes.
The tempo of recent SINKEX events, three in a matter of weeks, suggests the Navy and its partners are placing a premium on live-fire proficiency. In a Pacific theater where the Chinese navy continues to expand, that emphasis is overdue, not excessive.
The broader RIMPAC exercise covers a range of capabilities that reflect the complexity of modern naval warfare. But the SINKEX events draw attention precisely because they are irreversible. Once the missiles and torpedoes hit, the ship is gone.
The Navy's refusal to confirm the planned sinkings to Military Times is a minor but notable detail. No reason was given. The San Diego Union-Tribune had already reported the information, so operational security seems an unlikely explanation. The silence may simply reflect bureaucratic caution, or it may reflect a service that has grown wary of media scrutiny at a time when incidents involving Navy aircraft and crew have drawn public concern.
Service, sacrifice, and the seafloor
Between them, the Peleliu and Mobile Bay accumulated more than 70 years of commissioned service. They carried Marines to war zones, launched cruise missiles at enemy targets, evacuated embassies, and steamed over a million combined miles. One held a confessed enemy combatant. The other bore the name of a battle that produced one of the most famous phrases in American military history.
Now they will absorb the ordnance of allied warships and settle onto the Pacific floor. The Navy has not confirmed which nations or weapons systems will participate in the sinkings, and exact dates remain unannounced.
Training incidents at sea have reminded the public that naval service carries real risk even in peacetime. The loss of Lance Cpl. Armando Ortiz Canseco during training aboard the USS Anchorage was one such reminder. Live-fire exercises like SINKEX exist precisely so that when the shooting starts for real, fewer sailors and Marines pay the price of unpreparedness.
The open questions are straightforward. What weapons will be used? Which allied forces will take part? And why won't the Navy simply confirm what a regional newspaper already reported?
Ships that served this long and this hard deserve a final word, even if their final mission is to take a hit. The best way to honor what they did is to make sure the crews firing on them learn something worth knowing.
