The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Partnership is the dedicated humanitarian and civic assistance mission conducted with and through partner nations, non-governmental organizations and other U.S. and international government agencies to execute a variety of humanitarian civic action missions in the Pacific Fleet area of responsibility.

Pacific Partnership is designed to strengthen alliances, improve U.S. and partner capacity to deliver humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and improve security cooperation among partner nations.

Pacific Partnership 2010 is delivering HCA missions from USNS Mercy as the lead vessel. Mercy will visit Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Other partner nation and U.S. navy ships will visit Palau and Papua New Guinea.

Pacific Partnership evolved from Operation Unified Endeavor, the U.S. Government’s response to the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Building on the success and the goodwill this operation created in the region, U.S. Pacific Fleet sent the hospital ship USNS Mercy back to the region in 2006, demonstrating the U.S.’s commitment to the region. The mission staff expanded from the U.S. military to include non-governmental organizations, partner nations and host nation support to the people of the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, West Timor and East Timor.

In 2007, U.S. Pacific Fleet prepared another humanitarian assistance deployment designed to continue to build the relationships upon which security and stability in the region depend. It was christened Pacific Partnership and deployed on one of the Navy’s large deck amphibious ships, USS Peleliu, specially configured for humanitarian civic assistance. Spaces that normally would hold Marines became home for a robust multi-specialized team of preventative medicine personnel, engineering and civic assistance personnel, and a fleet surgical team. Pacific Partnership 2007 traveled to the Philippines, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

In 2008, in addition to partnering with host and other nations in the region, the non-governmental organization partners branched out from U.S.-based volunteers to local chapters of large and small NGOs within the host nations. The combined team provided a variety of civic action programs from and aboard USNS Mercy to the Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor Leste and Vietnam.

In 2009, regional alliances and partnerships were strengthened as the mission visited Oceania onboard the USNS Richard E. Byrd. The underway replenishment ship was retrofitted to carry out medical, dental, engineering and veterinary services to the Oceanic nations of Kiribati, Republic of the Marshal Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga.