U.S. Army flies HIMARS to Kauai in rapid strike drill

U.S. Air Force C-17s flew 25th Infantry Division HIMARS launchers to Kauai during the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center’s Rotation 27-01, where crews rolled them off on the airfield and went straight into a fire mission. The drill was a dry fire, with no rockets launched, and the division has not said how many launchers took part or which Kauai airfield it used.

The launchers came from the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment, which converted to HIMARS in July 2025 when the division took delivery of 16 launchers in two batteries of eight, replacing eight M119 and six M777 howitzers. The 15th Wing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam supplied the aircraft.

In a HIMARS Rapid Infiltration mission, or HIRAIN, a cargo plane lands the launcher at a remote strip, the crew fires, and the launcher is loaded back aboard and gone before the enemy can find it. The division’s release describes the aim as hitting enemy systems “without presenting a static target for adversary counterfire.”

“For us, a strike means being quick, so making sure that we’re up on all communications, and it means being accurate,” said 1st Lt. Cameron Richardson, a platoon leader in Bravo Battery, 2-11 FA. “We want to make sure that we’re hitting the right thing at the right time.”

Kauai was hundreds of miles from the exercise’s main ground fight on Oahu and the Island of Hawaii, and Richardson said the crews depended on Air Force loadmasters to get the launchers loaded, secured and ready to drive off as soon as the C-17s landed.

“Our C-17 aircraft are uniquely capable of rapidly repositioning any manner of equipment needed to operate in austere or contested environments, no matter the distance,” said Col. Kyle Clinton, commander of the 15th Wing.

Targeting ran over encrypted networks, with commanders using what the release calls “Super-Intelligence (SI) decision aids” and next-generation command and control software to process sensor data and confirm targets. The division did not name the software.

2-11 FA has been trying more than one way onto an island. In February, its crews rode an Army Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) to an unimproved Hawaiian beach, simulated a fire mission and pulled back out, the first HIMARS insertion and extraction by that vessel, according to the 8th Theater Sustainment Command. Air-delivered raids of the same kind have become a regular feature of U.S. HIRAIN training across the Pacific.

“Training here in Hawaii is exactly what prepares us to fight anywhere in the Pacific by rehearsing these short-notice deployments into contested terrain,” said Col. Bryan Fanning, commander of the 25th Division Artillery Brigade.

The division said the Kauai mission was preparation for its light infantry’s forward deployments to the Philippines under Operation Pathways, scheduled for next spring and summer.