18/04/2013
A US warship designed to fight in coastal areas arrived Thursday in Singapore for its Southeast Asian deployment, underlining President Barack Obama's new strategic focus on Asia.
The deployment of the USS Freedom comes at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula and as China publicly flexes its naval muscle in the South China Sea, where it has competing territorial claims with some Southeast Asian states.
US Navy officials said the Freedom, a new class of vessel called the littoral combat ship (LCS), sailed into Changi Naval Base at around 11:00 am (0300 GMT) in Singapore, a long-standing US ally that assists in logistics and exercises for forces in Southeast Asia.
The ship, the US Navy's first LCS which is designed to fight close to the shore, will be deployed for the next eight months in the region, where it will participate in naval exercises and visit other ports.
Read more at Channel NewsAsia.
Click here for latest South China Sea news.
In the past few years, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) has been expanding its activities in the South China Sea in particular and the Indo-Pacific in general.
On July 5, a week before hosting the 2023 NATO Summit, Lithuania released its own Indo-Pacific Strategy, becoming the 6th European country to devise such document (after France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the Czech Republic, if not including the EU). A few observations could be made from a...
On the 7th anniversary of the final ruling rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal in the arbitration between the Philippines and China concerning the South China Sea (July 12, 2016 - July 12, 2023), some countries, including claimants and non-claimants, issued statements expressing their positions regarding...
On 28 April, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued its final Judgment on the dispute concerning the delimitation of the maritime boundary between Mauritius and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, finally ending the dispute that had lasted for over three years. Both Mauritius...
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu officially visited Russia from April 15th to April 17th, 2023. The visit was closely monitored by the West due to their belief that the increasingly closer relationship between China and Russia, both politically and militarily, may result in China’s decision to provide...
---Copy.png&w=200)
