Japanese authorities say Chinese coast guard ships repeatedly infiltrate the territorial waters around the Japanese-controlled East China Sea near the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing also claims and calls Diaoyu. Japan’s Defense Ministry has reported growing joint naval activity by Chinese and Russian warships around the Japanese coasts. alliance is the cornerstone of security in the Pacific.Īfter a decade of steady increases in military spending, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishi has pledged to further bolster Japan’s military capability and spending over the next five years, while his government works on a revision to the national security strategy.
Paparo agreed that the security challenge is growing in the Pacific, adding that “tight coordination and integration” between the two navies “have paced and outpaced our potential adversary’s operation.” Paparo said the Japan and U.S.
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That will in turn free up larger, multi-mission ships suited for high-intensity combat, like Aegis destroyers, for missions in the Pacific.Kishi noted that the regional security environment has further worsened since last year when Paparo took the post and said cooperation between the Japanese and U.S. But Greenert emphasized that those raw numbers conceal a shift in capability: The increase in the Middle East will come mostly from smaller, specialist vessels - like the Littoral Combat Ship, the Mobile Landing Platform, and Afloat Forward Staging Base - which are suited to lower-intensity missions like minesweeping, counter-piracy, and combatting Iranian small boats. CENTCOM’s average will go from 30 today to 34 by 2020, PACOM from 50 to 58 ( assuming all the planned ships get built). Under the CNO’s own long-term plans, the average number of ships deployed to Central Command, which covers the Middle East, will in fact increase almost as sharply as the number in the Pacific. “That has led to longer deployments,” Greenert acknowledged, putting more strain on ships and crews. and Republic of Korea (ROK) military leaders to discuss the maritime security environment and reaffirm the strength of the relationship between U.S. Many in Congress have been bitterly skeptical of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s emphasis on a greener fleet - after all, biofuels currently cost more per gallon than old-fashioned gas - but Greenert insisted that the long-term “return on investment” from such eco-experiments is worth it.Īll this Pacific activity is taking place even as tensions with Iran force the Navy to keep two carrier battle groups in the Gulf, twice the Mideast commitment envisioned in Pentagon plans. Seventh Fleet, and Rear Admiral Cooper, commander, U.S Naval Forces Korea, met with senior U.S. And, Greenert boasted, an entire carrier strike group will be operating off biofuels. This year’s RIMPAC will also include more amphibious forces, long unavailable for exercises because of the Marine Corps’ massive commitments to land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All major surface combat ships of the Japanese and Allied navies are present in this streamlined reproduction of the biggest maritime war ever. And in keeping with the Administration’s emphasis on letting other nations take the lead, as in the Libya crisis last year, non-US officers will take command of multinational task forces in the RIMPAC exercise “for the first time,” Greenert said. Fleet Commander: Pacific is a grand strategic simulation of the naval war in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945. “It’s kind of extraordinary.” Just from Southeast Asia alone, he noted, “we have Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia all coming together” - despite their past conflicts (which Greenert diplomatically did not mention). As for RIMPAC, “this year is different because it’s bigger,” said Greenert.