US Navy ‘must grow’ to compete with China and Russia

The US Navy needs to expand its fleet and maritime capability to remain competitive as other nations such as China and Russia seek to strengthen their naval power, US head of naval operations Admiral John Richardson said on Tuesday. “We are getting back into, after decades really, an era of maritime competition,” Richardson said, adding that moves by China to match its economic clout with military sway should not be seen as alarming. “At some point you turn to the sea to expand and continue to prosper,” he said at the Changi naval base in Singapore. US President Donald Trump is set to release his fiscal 2018 budget next week. He has pledged previously to expand the navy’s fleet to 350 vessels from 272 now. “If you look at just the geography, wherever we are engaged today, where we are involved today, you can see that there is a size part of that,” Richardson said. “To provide credible options, to provide partnering opportunities, you need to be there. Numbers are a part of that solution.” Richardson’s comments came ahead of the release of a US Navy white paper on Wednesday. The US Navy has sent the Carl Vinson carrier group to North Asia, where it has conducted exercises with Japan and other countries at a time of heightened tensions with North Korea. Meanwhile, China last month launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier, amid worries about Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and its broader military modernisation programme. Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea, through which about US$5 trillion in sea-borne trade passes every year, are disputed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. “We need to be building a navy that is not only larger – all of the studies that have taken place over the past year or so pretty much agree with that – but it’s also got to be better,” Richardson said. “It’s not just about numbers, platforms, it’s also about what those platforms can do and then again how they all work together.” Richardson defended the Littoral Combat Ship programme, after two defence secretaries under former US president Barack Obama questioned whether the light ship intended for shallow coastal waters could survive in combat, and then cut back the numbers planned. Trump has created unease among some allies and smaller states in Asia over whether he will continue Obama’s military rebalancing to the region, which included beefing up the US naval presence in the disputed South China Sea. At the same time, China is ramping up spending on its military and recently launched its second aircraft carrier. US patrols challenging Beijing in South China Sea will continue, says US Navy commander US Defence Department spokesman Jeff Davis said on Monday that US “freedom of navigation operations” – naval patrols that enter territorial waters claimed by other countries, but which the US says are international waters – were not just about China. He said that during the last fiscal year, the US conducted such naval patrols in the waters near 22 different countries all over the world. “Many of those countries are friends and allies,” he said. “It’s not about one country, it’s not about one body of water.” According to the Pentagon’s “2016 freedom of navigation report” from February, the patrols occurred near Asian countries including Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, as well as ones outside the region like Venezuela, Albania and Maldives. US navy ships head toward Korean peninsula in show of force to North “Unfortunately, the public narrative has made it about China and the South China Sea. It’s not that,” Davis said. “It’s about certain international rights to navigate in waters that international law accepts.” Davis said the US “will continue to do” freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea, but would not say when. Bonnie Glaser, an Asia-Pacific security analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said she expected the US to conduct another such patrol soon. Shanghai-based military commentator Ni Lexiong said the US military always tried to exaggerate the China threat in order to lobby for a larger budget, whereas the Pentagon, part of the Trump administration, would be cautious in the South China Sea at a time it needed China to handle the problems on the Korean peninsula. “The Trump administration will carefully avoid provoking Beijing on China’s core interests, such as the South China Sea or Taiwan, at least until the North Korean nuclear crisis is settled,” Ni said. “But the military only needs to worry about if it can get more money, new ships and better weapons.” Additional reporting by Bloomberg, Reuters and Liu Zhen

US Navy ‘must grow’ to compete with China and Russia

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Head of American naval operations says world has entered new era of naval competition

Head of American naval operations says world has entered new era of naval competition